Critical issues for investment control of BT project from the perspective of project governance: the case study of a metro project

Abstract

It is well known that introduction of BT mode to the construction of public infrastructure can reduce financial pressure of government public sectors greatly, but it might make the public be exposed to the debt risks. The key of resolving this problem is to control the investment in BT project effectively. Due to the transfer and allocation of BT project control rights, the governance structure of BT projects can be decomposed hierarchically, which leads to some hierarchical features in the investment control system. Based on this hierarchical structure and a practical metro project example, the grounded theory was employed to identify key factors in the hierarchical structure for completeness and improvement of the investment control system. Furthermore, it studied the influence mechanism of key factors on the investment control system, some factors located in the level of contractual governance were discussed with emphasis. The research results show that those critical factors been discussed above have complicated relevance, which should be considered comprehensively by the public in order to build an effective investment control system and accomplish the objective of investment control. The research provides an important decision-making guideline for the project investment control of public sectors.