A public private people partnerships (P4) process framework for infrastructure development in Hong Kong

Public private partnerships (PPPs) have been widely adopted to provide essential social and economic infrastructure and services. However, there is currently no systematic mechanism governing how social concerns should be captured at different stages of a PPP project. This paper, therefore, advocates a rethinking of the pragmatic issues underpinning public engagement and suggests a process framework that puts people as a major stakeholder for implementing PPP schemes. This public private people partnerships (P4) process framework embraces the bottom-up participative strategies which bring the public engagement clearly visible for infrastructure planning and policy making. With this newly developed framework and associated engagement strategies, decision-making power can deviate from policy makers, who are traditionally holding the ultimate decision authority, towards the citizens through proactive engagement. Such strategy can help improve the development process by moderating the risk of unforeseen oppositions, building clear responsibilities and rights, and creating opportunities for public inputs. It is anticipated that formulating such effective and genuine public engagement framework for PPP projects would assist government bodies, not only in Hong Kong but also other parts of the world, to better realise the changing public aspirations and demands for infrastructure planning and policy formulation. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.