Outlined in Table 6.10 below, from a public sector perspective, is a set of generic risk management propositions that may contribute towards achieving VfM outcomes during the operational phase.
Table 6.10 Proposed Contributors to Risk Management VfM.
VfM contributors |
- Identified risks that may prevent business case or other defined strategic objectives from being met are appropriately managed - Service delivery is aligned / re-aligned with business case / project brief objectives, concession deed, service specifications and subsequent contract amendments - Service delivery is perceived by users and the wider community to represent VfM - Where appropriate, opportunity risk leading to improved VfM outcomes is implemented |
The documentation and / or actions presented in Table 6.11 can potentially be used as a foundation to build a generic risk management evidence-base to assess whether VfM outcomes are being achieved in practice.
Table 6.11 Proposed Evidence-base Foundations for Risk Management VfM.
VfM evidence-base foundation |
- Confidentiality agreements are put in place e.g. reduce the likelihood that public partner employees will divulge sensitive project information to third parties for personal gain - Public partner employee compliance with governance, probity and compliance frameworks - No occurrences of negligence, fraud and / or corruption - Outputs comply with relevant industry standards e.g. those relating to business continuity planning, public health and safety and fraud control - Assessing public partner employees behaviour to ensure they are effectively discharging their duties in line with project accountabilities and responsibilities e.g. against the contract administration manual - Transition, operations, environmental, quality improvement, performance shortfall, asset management, end of concession hand-over plans, etc are developed and progress against them is monitored - Risk registers, business continuity plans, issue logs, etc are developed, kept up-to-date and used to mitigate identified risks - Service usage (e.g. volume / demand) and failure event reports / exception reports are used for trend reporting to identify emerging risks - Benchmarking / competitive market testing is undertaken as scheduled - Relevant audit findings / recommendations are implemented - Lessons learned logs are used and disseminated as appropriate e.g. to facilitate the broadening of project-specific and wider public sector project knowledge - Innovation registers are used e.g. to facilitate ideas that could lead to service user improvements and / or cost efficiencies |
As discussed in the literature review and case study chapters, a raft of risk management issues have been identified that have the potential to detract from the achievement of planned VfM outcomes. These are: implementation of transition plan; contract variation; change of consortium members / change to public partner's agency authority; contract termination; end of concession hand-over; and reputation damage. This section re-states the main tenets of each issue and proposes possible treatment actions that may contribute to improved operational outcomes (in conjunction with examples provided in Table 6.10). 'External' considerations for sub-issues focus upon the accountabilities of service providers i.e. how consortia performance may be improved through public partner intervention. An 'internal' focus relates to the responsibilities of government in holding consortia accountable for delivering contracted services, as well as attempting to improve the capability of its employees, systems and / or processes. The rationale for integrating issues for the model is also presented.