Abstract
Population growth has increased over the past two centuries. In the driest countries, water supply alternatives are scarce, with desalination being an alternative to ensure water supply to the population. Desalination plants have increased in size and efficiency, and require large investments, large infrastructures, and complex technology, besides they also need sophisticated contractual formulas to successfully build them. Various contract models are tools that should be used by taking into consideration the characteristics of the project, the parties involved, and who is responsible for each of the risks involved. To help choose the most suitable type of contract for a particular project, so-called decision support systems have been developed over the past thirty years. In this paper, a new decision support system is presented and applied to a case study of two desalination plants built under the design and build and turnkey modes of contract. The objective was to determine the most suitable contract model for these types of projects which had very ambitious objectives and decisive social, economic, and environmental implications.
Highlights
The completion of a project is basically based on two operations: the conception of the work and its execution
In the present paper, a new decision support tool or system (DSS) to choose the most appropriate type of contract for the development of a project, such as the “Project and Work Selector” by Molenaar and Songer [18], and those by El-Wardani [19] or Thomsen [20], the guide to evaluate types of U.S Federal Highway Administration transportation contracts [21], the Transportation Research Program Guide, Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 131 [22], and other predictive models
The two chosen desalination projects as case study are of comparable size and complexity
Summary
The completion of a project is basically based on two operations: the conception of the work and its execution. Large infrastructure projects require large investments, they are highly complex technological structures to build, and require sophisticated contractual formulas to achieve them successfully This is especially true in water desalination projects, which we will discuss in this paper for their complexity and how they help to understand the importance of the type of contract chosen for their development. More than ever, the bidding process used, the financing, the chosen contract modality, the operation, and maintenance are key factors to successfully achieve the objectives set in the development of a desalination plant, which are: the supply of quality drinking water, in an environmentally friendly manner and in an economically competitive way. The procedure discussed in this paper can be used for any type of project in a general and objective manner
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