There you are in front of the guys from the government. Ten projects. Billions in investment. A slide deck so polished it should have its own LinkedIn account. Across the table, an experience contractor smiles. “Very exciting.” And then… back to his mobile phone… He checks the calendar. The team needed to bid your PPP is also wanted on a data centre, an energy project and a private industrial development. Tight schedule. Limited resources. All four projects will have problems. That is one of...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Infrastructure investors used to love a simple story. Capacity. Traffic. Revenue. Return. Easy stuff. A port handles more containers. A road carries more vehicles. And so on… Everyone opens Excel. Everyone smiles. Then the Strait of Hormuz says: Cute model. I love you… Welcome to geopolitics… force majeure or insurability… Now, the spreadsheet needs therapy. If you follow the news that doesn’t talk about Trump, you probably know that the Gulf is now accelerating investment in ports, pipelines...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Kenya may have explained toll-road PPPs better than many rich countries. I know. Uncomfortable. The normal script is different. Rich countries teach. Emerging markets learn. Someone says “capacity building.” Everyone nods. Beautiful. Except sometimes fiscal pressure creates better thinking than comfort. Kenya’s Rironi–Nakuru–Mau Summit Highway is interesting because the government seems to have asked the ugly question that someone needs to answer: Who pays? It’s a beautiful project… you...
4 days ago • 1 min read
A young engineer arrived at his first PPP meeting. He had prepared properly. He had read the 300-page PPP guide. Then the meeting started. Availability payments. DSCR. Relief Events. Compensation Events. Senior debt. Subordinated debt. After twenty minutes, he whispered to the person next to him: “Is there a glossary?” “Yes,” the colleague replied. “It’s 68 pages.” Welcome to PPP. I was not that junior this time… but trust me… I could have been… An industry that sometimes needs 68 pages,...
6 days ago • 1 min read
In 1991, researchers at Cambridge had a supply problem. Coffee. You know how this is… Nothing can get done without a great coffee. The poor scientists trying to save the world walked down several flights of stairs to discover an empty pot. Demand was strong. Storage was inadequate. And the previous users had consumed the strategic reserve. Anyone working in infrastructure should recognise the situation… the pattern… and the claims. So they installed a camera, connected it to their computer...
6 days ago • 1 min read
A German and a Swiss engineer build a bridge… Sounds like the start of a joke. But it is real. It happened in Laufenburg. The two countries used different reference levels for measuring elevation. A 27-centimetre difference. The engineers knew about it. So they corrected it. With the wrong sign. The difference became 54 centimetres. Beautiful. Two countries working together to make one problem twice as big. There’s a lesson here… The pictures are in the internet. If you’re not sure exactly...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Imagine the meeting. A team arrives with a brilliant infrastructure idea. Good engineers. Beautiful drawings. Some very expensive lawyers wearing 5.000 suits… so that you know well where your money is going… They may even have intellectual property. Actual IP. Something more substantial than putting “proprietary” in the footer. The project will reduce congestion, create jobs and transform the economy. Of course. Nobody has ever arrived at a minister’s office promising to make traffic worse....
9 days ago • 2 min read
Apparently, Poland has a PPP project with a CAPEX of €12,000. I haven’t forgotten any zeros. Twelve thousand euros. A colleague of mine in Poland told me the story. My first thought? Surely the lawyers cost ten times more. I haven’t seen their invoices. But, I would say… Please don’t send me a legal letter. It might double the project budget. But seriously. You know I work in PPPs. I like them. I’ve spent more than 20 years bidding, delivering and managing them. And sometimes, the most useful...
10 days ago • 1 min read
In 2009, French composer Maurice Jarre died. An Irish student called Shane Fitzgerald decided to give him something to say. Very generous. So… He invented a quote and added it to Jarre’s Wikipedia page. Newspapers picked it up for their obituaries. Lovely words. Right person. Perfect timing. Only one small problem. Jarre had never said them. The source was a student with an internet connection… unchecked. Apparently, that was enough to become an internationally published authority on what a...
11 days ago • 1 min read
