A lean perspective of stakeholder integration in public private partnerships

Abstract

The Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) is the party representing the private sector in a Public Private Partnership (PPP), and combines a number of stakeholders including equity shareholders, designers, contractors, and service providers under one umbrella. Consequently, the key to ensuring successful project delivery is achieving an efficient integration of the different SPV stakeholders involved, to deliver the project as a unified entity. However, the SPV’s stakeholder management role is highly under-investigated in the literature, and no studies have attempted to explore SPV stakeholder integration. This highlights a significant need to do so, considering that the former is both a prerequisite and a driver of PPP project success. This research aims to address this need through generating a list of SPV characteristics that reflect stakeholder collaboration and developing Critical Success Factors (CSFs) to measure the level of SPV stakeholder integration, based on concepts projected from the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) system. The aforementioned factors relate to the project’s organization structures, commercial frameworks, and operating systems and processes. This research is the first of its kind that aims to investigate the SPV’s integration level, from a holistic IPD perspective, as an enabler of successful relationship management.