CCPPP 2024 Canada's Infrastructure Conference
Superset Infrastructure is thrilled to sponsor The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships - Canada's Infrastructure Conference, taking place on November 4-5 in Toronto. This event comes at a crucial time as Canadian municipalities face increasing pressure to balance budgets, manage debt, and address critical infrastructure gaps.
We're especially excited that our own Arthur Tere. PMP, ACP, CCT, CSM will be participating in a panel discussion focused on enhancing municipal capacity for P3 projects. This panel, moderated by Sam Johnson, Director, Development, Graham Capital & Vice Chair, The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, Municipal Engagement Advisory Group, will explore how process improvements and advancements in technology can empower municipalities to successfully deliver P3 projects. Arthur will be joined by esteemed industry colleagues: Steve Risi, Associate Director, Capital Projects & Infrastructure Technology, KPMG and Derrick Toigo, Executive Director, Transit Expansion Division, City of Toronto.
This panel discussion presents a fantastic opportunity to share insights on how we can enhance project delivery and ensure sustainable infrastructure development across Canada. We'll be exploring innovative strategies to bridge the gap between public needs and private sector capabilities, with a focus on empowering municipalities to leverage P3s successfully.
Session Details
Session topic: Breakout Session 2D: Lightening The Capacity Load: Strategies for Supporting Community-Enabling Infrastructure and Asset Management
Session Description:
Canadian municipalities are responsible for the vast majority of the nation’s community-enabling public infrastructure. As these assets age and populations grow, municipalities face mounting pressure to balance operational budgets, manage debt, and address critical infrastructure gaps. Traditional delivery approaches alone just won't cut it anymore. Alternative delivery models, including P3s, have shown success in helping municipalities deliver projects efficiently while managing life cycle costs and risks. However, many municipalities lack the capacity and expertise to effectively oversee these projects, making it difficult to consider let alone adopt them as viable options.
This panel discussion will explore how process improvements and technological advancements can enhance municipal capacity to deliver P3 projects. The session will cover key strategies, including industry-specific process standardization, adopting common delivery frameworks, and using advanced project management solutions tailored for P3s. Attendees will learn how leveraging technology and refined processes can address challenges related to collaboration, reporting, oversight, and human capital management. By equipping municipalities with the tools to optimize P3 project delivery, this discussion aims to empower communities to effectively tackle their most pressing infrastructure needs.
Core themes:
Challenges with municipal capacity – municipalities are responsible for the majority of the nation’s community-enabling infrastructure. With assets aging and populations growing, municipalities face mounting pressure to balance budgets, manage debt, and still address critical infrastructure gaps.
Ways that alternative delivery models can address some of these challenges – in theory, there are a variety of alternative and collaborative project delivery models that can be utilized to help address some of these challenges – balance budgets, manage risks, address lifecycle costs. These approaches, including P3’s, have been utilized successfully across the country.
Barriers to adoption at the municipal level – despite the apparent benefits of alternative delivery models, we’ve yet to see traction at scale at the municipal level. Clearly, there are challenges in practice to the implementation of these models at the municipal level.
Expanding capacity – coming full circle; we acknowledge that there are challenges with municipal capacity, there are delivery models available that can assist in solving some core issues, but there are barriers to adoption of these models at the municipal level. Municipalities can leverage technology and processes to overcome some of these barriers.
Technology and process standardization as a means to expand capacity – we have more tools at our disposal today than we did two, five, or ten years ago. This rate of change is expanding and we’ll have more tools tomorrow than we do today. These tools are not going to replace people, but they certainly can augment the capacity of staff that are tasked with delivering infrastructure projects. Given the resource constraints that plague our industry, it should be a priority for us all to retain, upskill, and expand the capacity of people who are delivering these important projects.
Resources are available – the challenges in our industry impact all of us. Resource and capacity constraints aren’t just a municipal problem – they impact other project participants, and communities at large. Expertise is available – borrow best practices from communities with experience, draw on the expertise of private-sector firms with specialization in addressing these problems, or reach out to CCPPP and the Municipal Engagement Advisory Group.
About Superset Infrastructure
Superset Infrastructure specializes in developing and implementing tailored frameworks and technology solutions for P3 projects, standardizing project execution and addressing common challenges that impact their performance. Through aligning procurement strategies with technology enabled delivery approaches, we enhance both public and private sector capabilities in executing P3 and Alternative Delivery projects.
