We are excited to announce the formation of the Joint Centre for Public-Private Partnerships—a new collaboration between PPPI and The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London.

Combining the Bartlett’s world-renowned emphasis on multidisciplinary study with the PPP Initiative’s economics-driven approach to infrastructure issues, the Joint Centre will develop a new curriculum for graduate and executive education courses, emphasizing the frameworks, skills, motivations and incentives that underpin successful public-private partnerships. This curriculum combines The Bartlett’s focus of infrastructure investment, finance, and governance with PPPI’s years of research and educational experience.

In its initial stages, the Centre’s main focus will be on one of our world’s most pressing infrastructure challenges: healthcare. With non-communicable diseases, aging populations, and Covid-19 each threatening to overwhelm existing healthcare structures, the need for innovative new solutions is self-evident. Given PPPI’s extensive experience and research into healthcare PPPs, we are eager to “hit the ground running,” preparing a new generation of public- and private-sector professionals to develop efficient, transparent, and effective healthcare PPPs. In the process, the Joint Centre will seek to change the way we think about healthcare to include not only medical, scientific, and public health concerns, but also infrastructural and economic ones as well.

However, the Joint Centre’s focus will not be limited to healthcare alone, because the potential for public-private partnerships to transform the way we address large-scale policy challenges is not limited to one type of infrastructure. The Joint Centre will also seek to address challenges related to climate change, transport, water systems, and other features of the built environment.

The Centre will attract top-level talent not just from within the UK, but from around the globe, drawing from the worlds of investment, planning, finance, and management. With the potential addition of a public service fellowship program, top-tier graduate students could be encouraged to apply PPP knowledge to careers in the public sector, ensuring that—over the long run—PPP expertise would pervade the public sector as well as the private sector. Moreover, the Centre will act as a convening mechanism, bringing together high-level executives from across borders and across sectors, including public and private sector executives, graduate students, and constituent donor organizations.

The Joint Centre for Public-Private Partnerships enjoys support from a diverse group of public, private, and multilateral stakeholders. Potential donors include:

• governments
• NGOs
• multinational companies
• global infrastructure developers and asset managers
• government-backed, institutional investors.

This diverse set of supporters will allow the Joint Centre to address the medical, policy, development, investment, and management considerations associated with delivering effective and sustainable PPPs.