Recommendation 20

Using private financing requires skills and capabilities from public and private sector partners including, financial, commercial, construction, project and contract management abilities.44 The lack of a stable and consistent pipeline has contributed to the private sector not investing as much as it might have, while long contracts make it difficult to retain staff with particular knowledge and expertise for the full duration. Skills also diminish where departments have few projects.45 NISTA reported that part of the desire to improve the availability of expertise and capability within public authorities was to help reduce the number of costly legal disputes. NISTA told us it has been running several programmes to train contract managers within the public sector, that it has issued guidance and toolkits, and published an asset condition playbook to help contract managers manage their underlying contracts. NISTA also told us that its most “influential” programme is the associate pool of 60 experts from multiple fields who provide advice and support to public authorities.46