A Critique on Project Management View from Project Finance Perspective on the Critical Success Factors of PPP

Purpose - This study aims to find if the introduction of project finance perspective leads to any modification to the view of PM industry on CSFs of PPP and their relative importance rank. Design/methodology/approach - Through literature reviews, this study came up with a set of CSFs reflective of both perspectives. AHP method was applied for analysis by developing an Analytic Hierarchical Model from this set and survey questionnaires of pairwise comparison to solicit 46 qualified expert responses. Findings - This study concurs with PM industry to acknowledge ‘risk allocation’, ‘legal framework’ and ‘quality of feasibility’ as ones of most important CSFs. However, relative importance rank of individual CSFs goes through significant modification under this study in favor of ‘sponsor commitment and quality’ but against ‘political environment’, in particular. Research implications or Originality - Discussions on the CSFs led by PM industry have not been properly reflective of project finance perspective, which is injected into this study to cure the partiality. For researchers, findings of this study may call attention to financing perspective when they discuss CSFs of PPP. Practitioners may benefit from this study by allocating resources in view of this new finding when pursuing PPP projects.