Transmission Gully to be completed by NZTA. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
The infrastructure minister does not foresee the experience with the Transmission Gully motorway public-private partnership (PPPs) hurting future PPPs.
The Gully road, one of only two highway PPPs in the country, had unravelled under a confidential settlement this week.
This left the New Zealand Transport Agency picking up the operations and maintenance the Wellington Gateway Partnership was doing.
"All projects of scale come with complexity and risk, but this is not unique to the PPP model, and I do not anticipate that the experience on Transmission Gully will negatively impact future PPPs," Chris Bishop said in a statement.
Reviews had shown it was not the model that was solely to blame for the problems.
"Nearly all the key events and risks that the review identified could have happened under any procurement model."
The government's revised PPP framework would boost the chances of success, Bishop said, such as by enhancing collaboration, improving dispute resolution and creating more flexibility over determining whether a job was finished.
This latter became the crux of the dispute at Transmission Gully, between NZTA, the Gateway Partnership and the construction joint venture.
The out-of-court settlement meant NZTA would now finish off what it had said was incomplete work.
Bishop was revising PPPs at a time when the government wanted to use them more to build roads and other big projects.
PPPs were held up by the government as giving contractors greater incentive to build well and innovate, because this could pay off when they end up operating them for years, under annual fees paid by the Crown.
The flaws of existing operations and asset management by public agencies running their own buildings and facilities, were laid bare in a Te Waihanga Infrastructure Commission report in November.
It said in the foreword: "This report ... paints a confronting picture - pointing to consistently low levels of asset management maturity across nearly all of New Zealand's public infrastructure.
"Half of our hospital estate is over 40 years old and is in poor condition; the quality of our subsurface assets is oftentimes unknown: out of sight, out of mind."
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