A procurement policy-making pathway to future-proof large-scale transport infrastructure assets

Peter E.D. Love, Lavagnon A. Ika, Jane Matthews, Xinjian Li and Weili Fang

Research in Transportation Economics, 2021, vol. 90, issue C

Abstract: Governments worldwide have made a significant financial commitment to combat increasing traffic congestion and ageing transport networks over the next decade. However, large-scale transport projects are often late, over-budget, and below quality, making it difficult to future-proof assets and accommodate unanticipated changes. Evidence indicates that the traditional procurement model for large-scale projects used by Australian State Governments, for example, fails to deliver expected benefits. Markedly, a focused policy-making pathway is absent, especially for future-proofing these complex projects. Hence, the need to move away from a prevailing ‘understand, reduce, respond’ to a more adequate ‘understand, embrace, adapt’ attitude towards complexity and uncertainty in project procurement. The enabling functions of asset management, digitization, delivery, and finance might help. However, little is known about how they can coalesce to form a policy-making pathway to provide governments value for money outcomes and ensure assets are future-proofed. In this paper, we fill this void by reviewing the normative literature and proposing a conceptual approach. The issues we examine are of the utmost interest to governments worldwide as they grapple with designing, constructing, operating and maintaining transport assets that are both resilient to unexpected events and adaptable to changing needs, uses or capacities including climate change.

Keywords: Australia; Assets; Policy-making pathway; Procurement; Future-proofing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073988592100041X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:retrec:v:90:y:2021:i:c:s073988592100041x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_2&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2021.101069

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Transportation Economics is currently edited by M. Dresner

More articles in Research in Transportation Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().