New: PPP Contract Management Workshop

A PPP contract is not won or lost at signature. It is won or lost over the 20 to 30 years that follow.

Governments put enormous effort into getting PPP projects to financial close: feasibility studies, transaction advisors, financial models, competitive tenders. Then the contract is signed, the advisors move on, and a public team is left to manage a decades-long relationship with a well-resourced private partner. Experience across jurisdictions shows that this is exactly where many PPPs start to go wrong.

Today, the PPP Alliance is proud to open enrolment for Contract Management for Public-Private Partnerships, a four-day practitioner workshop dedicated to the stage that decides whether a PPP actually delivers the value it promised: managing the contract through construction, operations and eventual exit.

Why This Workshop Is Different

Most PPP training concentrates on appraisal, feasibility and procurement. Far less of it prepares people for what comes next. Earlier this year we wrote about why PPP contract management is indispensable for project success, and the response from our community was clear: many practitioners are handed responsibility for a live PPP contract with little structured preparation.

This workshop was designed to close that gap, and it does so in two distinctive ways.

Contract management starts long before financial close. The course treats contract management as a function that begins during appraisal, structuring and tendering, because the choices made there determine how manageable a contract will be for decades afterwards. Throughout the four days, participants work with four recurring components of contract management: setting up the contract management team and its governance, contract administration, relationship management, and performance management.

It cannot be taught in the abstract. Every theory session is paired with hands-on work on a single running case study, so participants live with the consequences of their own decisions. A poorly specified deliverable on Day 1 becomes a monitoring headache on Day 3 and a live dispute on Day 4, just as it would on a real project.

Meet Bayview International Airport

Every module is taught against one project: Bayview International Airport, a composite PPP case developed specifically for this course. Bayview is not a copy of any single transaction. It draws on publicly documented experience from real airport PPPs, including one with a clean, well-managed tender and financial close, and another that ran into construction-stage problems, disputes and stakeholder resistance to the finished asset. Combining the two means the case contains both well-drafted and poorly drafted material, so participants experience success and failure within a single, coherent project.

An airport was chosen deliberately. It combines construction complexity, a mix of regulated aeronautical and commercial non-aeronautical revenue, many stakeholders (airlines, regulators, passengers and neighbouring communities) and a long operating horizon. That gives the case natural material for every topic on the agenda.

Participants receive a project package of around 40 pages before the workshop, including:

• Project background, sponsors, sector context and the Bayview Airport masterplan
• A draft specifications package that deliberately mixes strong output-based clauses with weak, input-based or unmeasurable ones
• A term sheet setting out the proposed risk allocation and payment mechanism
• Financing structure and financial close documentation
• A mock quarterly performance report
• Bid documentation for a final-negotiation exercise, and a dispute scenario

Crucially, the case builds day by day. How you specify a deliverable on Day 1 is tested again on Day 3, when you must monitor and enforce it, and again on Day 4, when a dispute brings the earlier choices to the surface. That mirrors reality: a PPP contract is one continuous instrument, not a series of disconnected decisions.

The Four Days at a Glance

Each day pairs a facilitator-led theory session in the morning with hands-on small-group practice in the afternoon. The arc is simple: first build the substance of a PPP contract, then put it under pressure in a negotiation and a dispute.

Day 1: Foundations and Project Specifications

The day opens by mapping where contract management responsibilities arise across the whole PPP lifecycle, from identification and appraisal through tendering, construction, operations and handback. After a briefing on Bayview and a 20-question readiness quiz, the afternoon tackles one of the hardest parts of any PPP: writing specifications that can actually be enforced.

Topics include the difference between construction and O&M specifications, turning a policy goal such as "a modern, high-capacity terminal" into enforceable deliverables, testing outputs against the SMART framework, specifications that cannot be measured once the asset is operating, payment-linked milestones, and the role of the independent engineer in certifying milestones and triggering financing drawdown.

Case exercise: Groups review the Bayview draft specifications, flag the weak clauses, explain what is wrong with each, and redraft two or three as SMART, output-based requirements.

Day 2: Risk Structuring, Commercial and Legal

The morning introduces the risk matrix as the central structuring tool, using both qualitative (3x3 and 5x5 tolerability matrices) and quantitative assessment. It works through construction, demand and revenue, financing, force majeure and change-in-law risk, and applies the core principle: each risk sits with the party best placed to manage, control or price it, not with whoever convention suggests.

The afternoon turns that matrix into contract language: representations and warranties, indemnities, compensation and rebalancing mechanisms, government guarantees and contingent liabilities, and how force majeure and change-in-law clauses interact with termination rights.

Case exercises: Build a risk matrix for Bayview covering events such as a passenger traffic shortfall, land availability delays, a change in aeronautical charge regulation and a currency shock. Then draft, or critique, a compensation event clause and compare it with a model clause.

Day 3: Financial Structuring and Performance Management

The morning explains how a project-financed PPP is funded through equity, mezzanine debt and senior debt, why lenders tie drawdown to certified milestones, and how availability payments and user-pays structures transfer demand risk differently. It also covers affordability ceilings and why the gap between signature and financial close varies so widely.

The afternoon returns to the Day 1 specifications and asks the practical question: can they be monitored and enforced? It covers KPI regimes and target service levels, operator self-reporting through a Quality Management System versus independent verification, spot checks and audits, deduction regimes and default events, and the relationship management practices that stop performance issues becoming disputes.

Case exercises: Compare a fast financial close with a delayed one caused by a financing gap and assess the effect on risk allocation. Then respond to a mock quarterly performance report with several missed KPIs: decide whether deductions are warranted and how to communicate them to the private partner.

Day 4: Negotiation, Tendering and Dispute Resolution

The morning gives procurement its full treatment: RFQ and qualification criteria, framing the RFP around performance rather than prescription, weighting evaluation across design, construction methodology, financial proposal and operating plan, competitive dialogue and negotiated processes, and the final negotiation round before signature.

The afternoon covers where PPP disputes come from and how to resolve them, from direct negotiation and mediation through expert determination and dispute boards to arbitration. It also covers lender step-in rights, remedies short of termination, renegotiation, and exit and handback, one of the most common points at which governments lose value at the end of a PPP.

Case exercises: A mock final negotiation between "procuring authority" and "bidder" teams on Bayview's last open commercial terms. The workshop closes with a capstone dispute combining a construction delay, a financing shortfall and stakeholder resistance, where groups propose and present a resolution path.

What You Will Be Able to Do

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Explain how contract management responsibilities arise at every stage of the PPP lifecycle, not only after financial close
• Draft and critically assess output-based specifications using the SMART framework
• Build a project risk matrix, apply sound allocation principles and turn them into enforceable clauses
• Explain how PPP financing structures and payment mechanisms work and how they interact with risk allocation
• Design a KPI-based performance monitoring and enforcement regime
• Structure a tender from RFQ through RFP to contract award and negotiation
• Identify the sources of PPP disputes, choose the right resolution mechanism, and explain the essentials of exit and handback

Who Should Attend

The workshop brings together public- and private-sector participants who deal with PPP contracts in practice:

• Contract management staff in procuring authorities and PPP units
• Government legal, financial and technical advisors involved in PPP transactions
• Transaction advisors and consultants supporting PPP structuring or tendering
• Project company and concessionaire staff who work with the procuring authority
• Sector regulators and oversight bodies with a role in contract compliance

Having both sides of the table in the room is part of the value: the negotiation and dispute exercises are far more realistic when participants bring public and private perspectives.

Participants should already be familiar with PPP basics such as the project lifecycle, the rationale for PPPs and common contract types. The workshop builds on that foundation rather than introducing it. If you need a refresher first, CP3P Foundation is the ideal starting point, and the workshop is a natural next step for anyone who has completed CP3P Execution.

Learning Before, During and After the Workshop

The four days are supported by the PPP Alliance online learning environment:

• Before: you receive your login, the Bayview case study package and any pre-reading. The Day 1 quiz checks that reading rather than introducing it.
• During: quizzes and case exercises are submitted online. Multiple-choice questions are graded automatically, open exercises are assessed by the instructor, and a progress dashboard tracks your scores activity by activity.
• Content library: ongoing access to the reference material behind the workshop, including the relevant chapters of the APMG PPP Certification Guide, sample contract clauses, risk matrices and the full Bayview documentation.
• After: access continues for a period after the workshop so you can review materials, revisit your work and complete any outstanding activities.

Certification

Participants who achieve an average score of at least 70% across all graded activities, the Day 1 readiness quiz and the case exercises from Days 1 to 4, receive the PPP Alliance Certificate of Completion in Contract Management for Public-Private Partnerships. Because several exercises are open-ended, such as a redrafted specification or a proposed dispute resolution path, the final score combines automatic grading with instructor assessment. Participants who fall short may, at the instructor's discretion, be invited to revise and resubmit specific activities.

Workshop Details

• Format: Four consecutive in-person days, supported by an online learning environment
• Dates: [insert dates]
• Location: [insert venue and city]
• Fee: [insert price in USD; note any member or early-bird discount]
• Includes: the 40-page Bayview case study package, online learning environment access and content library
• Certificate: PPP Alliance Certificate of Completion (70% average across graded activities)

Bring the Workshop to Your Organisation

Managing a PPP portfolio is a team effort. The workshop can also be delivered as a private programme for PPP units, ministries, regulators and development finance institutions. Contact us to discuss a session for your team.

Reserve Your Place

PPPs succeed or fail over decades, not at signature. In four days, you will draft specifications, allocate risk, structure the finance, enforce performance, negotiate a deal and resolve a dispute, all on one project, just as you would in practice.

The PPP Alliance is an independent body of knowledge for the advancement of Public-Private Partnership knowledge and best practices. Interested in joining the community? Become a member today.