Critical Issues Affecting Dispute Resolution Practice in Infrastructure Public

Critical Issues Affecting Dispute Resolution Practice in Infrastructure Public–Private Partnerships

Musenero, Leah / Baroudi, Bassam / Gunawan, Indra

Infrastructure public–private partnership (PPP) projects across the world have suffered early termination, premature change of ownership, cost and time overruns, among others, often resulting from a number of issues some of which are related to poorly managed dispute. Despite this, literature revealed that no process-centric attempt had been made to highlight the critical issues affecting dispute resolution (DR) in infrastructure PPPs. Through event sequence analysis (ESA) of 158 data sources (including 63 journal articles), this study examined the critical issues affecting infrastructure PPP DR practice, with the motivation of unveiling areas of potential improvement to the DR practice. Among other findings, the multiple roles of the public partner in the DR process were found to result in ambiguity on who was responsible for overseeing their actions. Relatedly, the effectiveness of dispute boards was on some occasions undermined when they were assigned multiple functions. Besides this study adding to the theoretical body of knowledge through application of ESA in infrastructure PPP DR research, it clarified the critical issues affecting current infrastructure PPP DR practice, thereby enhancing infrastructure PPP practitioners’ understanding of potential barriers to successful infrastructure PPP DR. Although the researchers acknowledge the plausibility of an in-depth investigation into ways in which the critical issues in DR practice can be addressed, the main focus of this study was to provide clarity on the critical issues affecting DR in infrastructure PPPs. A separate study focusing on improvements to DR in infrastructure PPPs is recommended.