Making Public Private Partnerships Work

Public Private Partnerships are no longer new. They are now a well-established vehicle for delivering large capital projects or managing services. Many organizations are now working with 'multi sector partnerships' across a huge range of sectors involving multiple partners. The increasing complexity of these partnerships, of the risks associated with them and the outcomes required of them, demand a new level of skill from those establishing and building the partnership. Michael Geddes' Making Public Private Partnerships Work offers a highly pragmatic guide to the processes behind multi sector partnerships including the skills of championing and managing the partnership internally, the organizational structure that underpins most successful partnerships, how to resource and staff the partnership, assuring accountability and good governance, and how to manage and communicate the performance of any partnership. He uses case study examples drawn from a whole range of partnerships to compare different practical approaches to each part of the process; against which you may benchmark your own approach and identify best-practice to follow. Making any medium- or long-term partnership work is a challenge for any organization. The different partners bring different skills, expectations and needs to the partnership. Managed well, the diversity of the partners adds to the success of the relationship and the outcome of the partnership, but this is a process that requires careful planning, management and review, all of which is explained in Making Public Private Partnerships Work.

Michael Geddes retired from full-time consultancy in 2003. As part of his consultancy work he was the part-time Executive Director of the Milton Keynes Economic Partnership, a multi sector partnership established to coordinate the strategic development of the area. He also served for four years as a Vice Chairman of the Regional Assembly. Prior to becoming a consultant in the mid-1990s he worked in the Cabinet Office as a Civil Service Commissioner and Chief Executive of Recruitment and Assessment Services. Earlier in his career he was a Director of Ashridge Management College. Michael Geddes is also co-author of Project Leadership, also published by Gower.