PPP State-of-the-Art in Turkey During COVID-19 Outbreak: Evidence from a Transportation Project

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on construction projects with respect to project success factors such as time, cost, and safety. Due to their unique characteristic of involvement of several national and international public and private parties, public-private partnership (PPP) projects were also considerably affected. This study examined the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project in Turkey, “1915 Çanakkale Bridge and Highway,” which has been at the construction phase during the pandemic outbreak. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with (i) a representative of a contractor firm, (ii) a subcontractor firm, and (iii) a group of occupational health and safety (OHS) officials of the consortium. Measures taken and the major impacts of the pandemic have been discussed with the participants, which enabled the comprehension of the context from various perspectives. The findings showed that the project parties quickly adapted to the pandemic requirements at the very early stages of the outbreak, even before the first official announcement on COVID-19 cases in Turkey. The measures were mainly similar in many of the projects in the country (such as cleaning up, disinfections, brochures, tele-commuting, social distancing). However, stricter measures were adopted in the case project (particularly related to site entrance and exit) compared to projects procured through traditional delivery methods. This study explains how the risks due to COVID-19 were handled in a mega project procured through BOT model and presents the lessons learned from a case study.