Civil & Environmental Engineering
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Item DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR EX-POST VALUE FOR MONEY ANALYSIS IN PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROJECTS(2015) Ghorban, Amir; Cui, Qingbin; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In recent years, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) has emerged as a project delivery option for transportation projects in the US. This type of project delivery is generally a long term agreement between the public and private sectors for the purpose of delivering a project or service traditionally provided by the public sector. Some of the reasons for implementing PPPs are the ability to provide an overall lower life-cycle cost and to increase cost and schedule certainty. This is sometimes referred to as the ability to provide a better Value for Money, hence the use of Value for Money (VFM) analyses to compare overall financial impacts of PPP against those of a traditional delivery alternative. While the VFM analysis is considered as the best practice for selecting PPP approach, the primary challenge in conducting the analysis, however, is to validate the empirical results of these studies. Most of the previous studies have investigated ex-ante results and little has been done in regards to what can be considered ex-post studies. This study presents a framework for ex-post value for money analysis. Processes, data requirement, and algorithms are developed to ensure an ex-post assessment can be performed at various stages of PPP project development including commercial close, substantial completion, during operation and maintenance phase, and final acceptance. The Presidio Parkway project in San Francisco will be used as a case study to illustrate the method and procedure of ex-post VFM analysis framework.Item STRUCTURED PROJECT FINANCE FOR PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS IN THE U.S.: AN ENHANCED APPROACH TO BETTER ACHIEVE FINANCIAL AND POLICY OBJECTIVES(2014) Farajian, Morteza; Cui, Qingbin; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As existing U.S. infrastructure ages, government entities are looking to the private sector and to alternative financing mechanisms, such as project finance, to help leverage traditional funding sources and pay for the increasing needs. As a result, the use of Public-Private Partnership (P3) delivery method in the U.S. has increased over the last two decades. The question is how the existing cases can be used to potentially enhance the current P3 model both in terms of bankability and overall procurement process maturity. This study is organized into three main parts. In the first section, project finance in general and the role of different credit enhancements in structured project finance in particular have been. In the second section, a QCA analysis has been perfumed to study and compare 18 P3 projects that have been procured in the U.S. over the last two decades. The goal is to identify logical patterns between project characteristics (i.e. capital value, term of contract, construction risk, traffic and revenue risk, and procurement competition level) and financial characteristics (i.e. equity IRR, interest rate on debt and leverage). The results are further analyzed to refine conclusions that to can provide a better understanding of how financing package of P3 projects may change based on project characteristics and policy objectives. In the third section, an enhanced P3 model has been proposed by using crowdfunding. A SWOT analysis has been conducted to explain how the proposed approach can improve current P3 model. The findings of this study can help P3 practitioners to better utilize available tools and also provides them with new tools to further enhance procurement of P3 projects. The case library provides a significant resource to practitioners as well as researchers and the proposed corwdfunding approach is a novel step toward taking P3 projects to a new maturity level.Item Agent-Based Models of Highway Investment Processes: Forecasting Future Networks under Public and Private Ownership Regimes(2012) Yusufzyanova, Dilya; Zhang, Lei; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present highway funding system, especially fuel taxes, may become a less reliable revenue source in the future, while the transportation public agencies do not have sufficient financial resources needed to meet the increasing traffic demand. In the last two decades there has been increasing interest in utilizing private sector to develop, finance and operate new and existing roadways in the United States. While transportation privatization projects have shown signs of success, it is not always clear how to measure the true benefits associated with these projects for all stakeholders, including the public sector, the private sector and the public. "Win-win" privatization agreements are tricky to make due to conflicting nature of the various stakeholders involved. Therefore, there is a huge need to study the welfare impacts of various road privatization arrangements for the society as a whole, and the financial implications for private investors and public road authorities. In order to address these needs, first, an empirical analysis is performed to study the investment decision processes of public transportation agencies. Second, the agent-based decision-making model is developed to consider transportation investment processes at different levels of government which forecasts future transportation networks and their performance under both existing and alternative transportation planning processes. Third, various highway privatization schemes currently practiced in the U.S. are identified and an agent-based model for analyzing regulatory policies on private-sector transportation investments is developed. Fourth, the above mentioned models are demonstrated on the networks with grid and beltway topologies to study the impacts of topology configuration on the privatization arrangements. Based on the simulation results of developed models, a number of insights are provided about impacts of ownership structures on the socio-economic performance in transportation systems and transportation network changes over time. The proposed models and the approach can be used in long-run prediction of economic performance intended for describing a general methodology for transportation planning on large networks. Therefore, this research is expected to contribute significantly to the understanding and selecting proper road privatization programs on public networks.