01630069

Component

This paper asks how new infrastructure authorities transition from buying relatively simple outcomes like a road design or a bridge construction, to buying complex performance outcomes such as the availability of passenger services on a rail system. A case study of the California High-Speed Rail Authority is used to understand what triggers such a transition and how it is shaped. Informal and semi-structured interviews from the owner side are used together with secondary data. There are three insights from the research. The first is that exogenous events and blunt policy responses can play a major role in triggering and setting the pace of the transition to procuring complex performance (PCP). The second is that timing, uncertainty and conditions of funding then play a secondary shaping role. The third is that a program of procurements should be considered holistically across all private and public suppliers to help with governance, contractual and integration challenges. The study adds a case to the field of PCP from a buy-side perspective of a large capital expansion program in its start-up phase. This is in contrast to the experiences of established, permanent procuring authorities in the paper’s anchoring studies.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ10 Standing Committee on National Transportation Data Requirements and Programs.

01618707

17-01031

English

16p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References

Case studies; Contracts; Districts and authorities; Financing; High speed rail; Policy; Procurement

California High Speed Rail Authority

Administration and Management; Finance; Railroads

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-01031

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:17AM