Life Cycle Management and Infrastructure Essay

Supply Chain Management Theory and Case Study

The process of constructing and maintaining of the immense and integral networks of infrastructure which are vital to the support and survival of municipalities and nations invariably relies upon the cooperative efforts of private enterprise and public entities to ensure that key elements such as a project's budgetary and scheduling concerns are addressed in an with economy and efficiency. Throughout the last century both private and public concerns were willing to work together in a collaborative way via the public-private partnership (PPP) model, a system which enables municipal governments to institute the issuing of bonds to produce financial support which is necessary for interstate highways, hydroelectric power plants, and the core components of infrastructure in the modern age. In a jointly authored article titled "A life-cycle risk management framework for PPP infrastructure projects," which was published within the Journal of Financial Management Of Property & Construction in 2008, the link between life cycle risk management framework theory and PPP-based infrastructure development is explored using a combination of research review and case study methodologies. As the authors state in the article, "to ensure the success of PPP infrastructure projects, it is important for all partners to manage the risks from a project life cycle perspective, in which risks are identi-ed and assessed in the earliest possible project stage and are allocated to the parties who are in the best position to control them," (Zou, Wang & Fang, 2008), and this assertion is then supported by citing a number of examples from across the spectrum of infrastructure design. Throughout the paper readers are reminded of the essential aspects of PPP-based infrastructure implementation through the lens of life cycle management theory, and the authors make a strong case that "the importance of putting efforts on a continuous life-cycle risk…