Rethinking new public infrastructure value for money in recession times: the Greek case

Abstract

The recent financial crisis in Europe has led to large reduction of public investment and urges the recession-hit countries to revisit their approach to new infrastructure projects initiation in light of the current budgetary constraints. This paper reviews the methodologies and practices implemented worldwide with the aim to achieve cost efficiency in infrastructure development and critically discuss the current approach to planning and designing of infrastructure projects in Greece. A number of transport infrastructure projects under tendering or construction, including urban express roads, urban development projects, cruise port, urban rail and airport, are presented and analyzed. The authors highlight the critical role of the implementation of appropriate tools and informed decision making in design and construction and present alternative solutions of enhanced cost efficiency for the required value for money to be achieved in each of the above projects.

Proposal for the Promotion of Standardization of Precast Beams in Highway Concrete Bridges

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“…The purpose of the market analysis is to determine the condition of the container transport movement, port capacity, and see the response of the stakeholders to the construction of a railway project. Besides, analysis of target markets is a critical factor for efficient project design and precise estimation of returns and financial performance in the context of Benefit-Cost Analysis [15]. From the results of the survey, we can analyze to determine the market for this railway construction project.…”

The 7 challenges of road management towards sustainability and development

“…Value engineering also appears as an innovative concept to be taken into account by the tendering authorities. The concept consists of maximizing the performance-to-cost ratio of a project or an asset (Marinelli et al, 2018), either by improving the performance or by reducing the cost. In fact, this may be regarded as another version of a cost-benefit analysis, although value engineering is much more than this: it is a search for non-obvious, alternative, cost-effective solutions and it increases the value of, and fully exploits, the asset.…”