PPP Consultants
What we believe
Four convictions run through everything the firm does. Each one heads an article — the Insights page is where they are argued in full.
“Closing a Public Private Partnership on time and on budget is a function of work done long before bidders see the documentation.”
From: Closing a PPP — the discipline, not the decoration.
“Bids are scored, not read.”
From: Writing infrastructure tenders to the evaluation matrix
“Engineering feasibility and financial bankability are different tests.”
From: Buildable is not bankable.
PPP Consultants publishes on the disciplines that decide infrastructure outcomes — procurement, bid craft, bankability and finance. Plain, practical, and partner-written.
PPP ADVISORY · FEATURED
Closing a PPP — the discipline, not the decoration
A Public-Private Partnership is usually won or lost long before a bidder opens the documentation. The work that decides the outcome is early, unglamorous, and easy to skip — which is exactly why it is worth doing.
David Crowley, CEO · March 2026 · 6 min read
There is a comfortable assumption in infrastructure procurement: that a Public-Private Partnership succeeds on the strength of its bid — the polish, the renderings, the launch.
The evidence points elsewhere. Closing a PPP on time and on budget is a function of work done long before bidders ever see the documentation. The decoration is what everyone can see. The discipline is what closes the deal.
That early work is unglamorous. It is defining an output specification that can actually be measured, rather than one that simply reads well. It is allocating each risk to the party best able to carry it, and pricing honestly what cannot be transferred. It is building a financial model that will survive forensic review, not one that merely balances. And it is aligning the evaluation matrix with the things that genuinely determine value, so that the competition rewards the right behaviour.
Take the evaluation matrix. Bids are scored against it line by line, not read in the round. A matrix that rewards the wrong things will produce the wrong winner, however good the projects beneath it. Getting that matrix right — before the market ever sees it — is a modest piece of work that shapes a contract lasting 25 years.
None of this is visible at launch, and all of it takes time that programmes rarely feel they have. Political timetables reward going to market; they do not reward the weeks spent structuring beforehand. So the structuring is compressed, and the gaps are left for the bidders — and later, for the lenders — to find.
The cost then arrives late, between preferred bidder and financial close, when the risk matrix meets due diligence and the assumptions meet a lender’s scrutiny. That is the most expensive place to discover a problem. Months are lost to renegotiation, value leaks out of the deal, and some transactions — sound on paper — simply fail to close.
The remedy is not more documentation.
It is earlier discipline. A risk allocation that survives lender review is far cheaper to build at the outset than to repair at the end. An output specification written to be measured saves a decade of disputes in operation. A model built to a forensic standard earns a lender’s confidence — and competitive terms follow. The work compounds quietly, in the project’s favour.
Done well, a Public-Private Partnership is one of the most efficient procurement instrument a government has. Realising that potential is not a matter of decoration. It is a matter of the discipline applied long before the documentation is ever written.
PPP ADVISORY · ABSTRACT
Writing infrastructure tenders to the evaluation matrix
PPP Consultants - January 2026 - 3 min read
A published evaluation matrix is the real brief for any infrastructure tender, yet most bids are written as prose to be read rather than as evidence to be scored.
Evaluation panels do not read; they score, criterion by criterion, against published weightings — and, in practice, against the way those criteria are interpreted in the room.
A tender written to the matrix puts the evidence exactly where the marks are, in clear and evaluable English, and leaves nothing for the panel to infer.
The discipline is unglamorous: map every requirement to its scoring line, answer it explicitly, and resist the urge to impress where no marks are on offer.
It is also where bids are won. The firm drafts bid documentation to the evaluation matrix as a matter of course — because a point not scored is a point lost, however good the underlying project.
PPP ADVISORY · ABSTRACT
Buildable is not bankable
PPP Consultants · November 2025 · 3 min read
An infrastructure project can be entirely buildable and still fail to attract finance.
Engineering feasibility asks whether a thing can be built; bankability asks whether its cashflows, risk allocation, and whole-life costs will satisfy a lender.
They are different tests, set by different people, and a clear ‘yes’ to the first does not imply a ‘yes’ to the second. The gap between them is where many promising projects stall — a sound design wrapped around an unfinanceable structure.
Closing that gap means building the financial case with the same rigour as the technical one: transparent risk allocation, predictable cashflow, and a whole-life cost profile a lender can test.
The firm works on both sides of that line, so that what is buildable is also bankable — and a project that can be built can also be financed.
PPP ADVISORY · ABSTRACT
Raising competitive finance for infrastructure
PPP Consultants · September 2025 · 3 min read
Capital for infrastructure is not, in the end, scarce — credibility is.
Lenders price the risk they perceive, and a project that presents transparent risk allocation, defensible assumptions, and predictable cashflow lowers that perception, and with it the cost of capital. Competitive terms follow credible structure, not the other way round.
The discipline is to make a case a lender can believe: a model that withstands forensic review, a risk matrix that survives due diligence, and a clear account of who carries what.
Done well, it opens access to several capital pools at once and lets them compete.
The firm structures and raises senior debt and equity for commercially viable schemes on exactly this basis — because capital follows credibility, and credibility is built, deliberately, before the first lender is ever approached.
Sunset over the South Atlantic at Walvis Bay, Namibia
From first conversation to close
1
First conversation
2
Analysis
3
Engagement letter
4
Partner-led delivery
A direct, partner-led conversation under commercial confidentiality to understand the project and what you need.
We assess the project's commercial structure, risk allocation and bankability, and define where we add value.
A clear scope and terms — from a single deliverable to full Project Director responsibility through to Financial Close.
Senior partners lead the work throughout, from mandate to close.
The first conversation.
Every first conversation is partner-led and conducted under commercial confidentiality. We set out, with you, how PPP Consultants will deliver the outcomes you require.
