The Public Sector P in P3s: May 21, 2014

On May 21, 2014, the Edmonton Chapter of the Financial Management Institute (FMI) hosted a conference entitled: ‘The Public Sector P in P3s’.

The public looks to all levels of government to build and maintain infrastructure to support the economic and social wellbeing of their communities. At the same time, the public is asking how infrastructure expenditures can be more effective, efficient and how the results can be brought on-line sooner and with less disruption. The innovation and flexibility of private enterprise needs to meet the funding and legislative power of the public sector and thus the concepts of Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) were born.

109 people attended the conference which was a production of the Financial Management Institute of Canada (FMI) with co-hosting and promotional assistance from  the Institute of Public Administrators (IPAC) and the Institute for Public Economics, University of Alberta.  Notes relating to the conference are available:

• Pre-conference package
• 2014-05-21 – P3 Conference Notes or by Visiting the Past Events Page of the FMI Website

Five speakers as follows provided their perspecitves on P3s:

• Federal Perspective:  Dr. Cheryl Nelms, PWGSC, Canada
• Provincial Perspective:  Neill McQuay, Alberta Infrastructure
• Municipal Perspective:   Wayne Mandryk, City of  Edmonton
• Union Perspective:  Marle Roberts, CUPE Alberta
• Private Firm Perspective:  Dr. Stephen Stanley, EPCOR

The moderator for the conference was Dr. Robert Ascah, a fellow of the Institute of Public Economics, University of Alberta.

My responsibilities for the program was to take the original suggested idea, flesh out a concept paper, recruit the speakers, project manage the event and then edit the final conference notes.  A huge note of thanks go out the speakers who volunteered their time, Bob Ascah who was our moderator, IPAC who co-hosted the event, many organizations who assisted in its promotion and finally my fellow board members of the FMI Chapter who made it so.

The final conference notes are available above and may be re-distributed with attribution given to FMI-Edmonton and the original speakers.  The content has been reviewed and approved by the respective speakers.  It is important to stress that this is not a transcript of the conference but instead the key themes and messages edited for brevity and clarity.

Planning documents, feedback and other information about the conference for FMI, IPAC and IPE organizers will be available via future blogs.