Best value concessionaire selection through a fuzzy logic system

Best value is the ultimate goal in the development of infrastructure projects through public private partnerships. This necessitates a best value approach in selecting the right private partner (i.e., the concessionaire) that involves evaluating alternative concessionaires against multiple conflicting criteria of varying degrees of importance and uncertainty. Correspondingly, this paper has developed a quantitative best value concessionaire selection system. The essence of this system lies in (1) the establishment of four-package evaluation criteria that can effectively measure the concessionaire’s capability and “predict” its future performance toward achieving the government’s best value objectives and (2) the development of a fuzzy-composite scoring and ranking method that ensures the right “tradeoff” between these criteria by relatively weighting fuzzy scores and logically aggregating evaluation results. This system would not only provide the government integrated assessments of alternative concessionaires so as to award the contract to the right concessionaire whose proposal is perceived to be able to maximize the outcome of the project, but also satisfy the requirements of the legal decision in order to withstand legal challenges concerning the public contract awarded in a best value approach. A hypothetical case study is provided to demonstrate the application of this best value concessionaire selection system.