Delivering Infrastructure Better, Faster and Cheaper: by Charles V. McPhillips Lessons in Shifting Risk and Reducing Life-Cycle Cost for the Public Owner I. Overview: Re-Engineering the Procurement Process to Save Taxpayer Dollars With our “crumbling national infrastructure” constantly in the news, I submit that, in ap-propriate circumstances, a properly struc-tured public-private partnership (P3 project) can save time and money for a public body that wants to deliver new and much-needed infrastructure to its constituents. The cost savings are particularly signifi cant when, as a wise steward of the taxpayers’ money, the public body weighs the total cost — and risk — of operating and maintaining that infra-structure over its useful life (or what should be its useful life). Under pressure in a budget-constrained environment to deliver a new road, a new school or a new municipal building, public owners often feel compelled to disregard the reality that most of a facility’s total life-cycle costs will be incurred in the “out years,” operating and maintaining the structure over its expected life. Here lies the Achilles heel in the tradi-tional public procurement process: the tax-payer bears the risk that the signifi cant costs of keeping a facility open for business over its useful life will exceed what is anticipated. Far too often nothing — or nothing realistic — is budgeted! The result is the staggering cost of deferred maintenance and neglected high-ways, bridges, schools and other public buildings. By hastening the early demise of our infrastructure, deferred maintenance necessitates major renovations and capital replacements, piling extra operation and maintenance costs upon the taxpayer that can range anywhere from 6 to 40 times what proper maintenance would have cost. 1 In large part due to the insidious cost of deferred maintenance, the American Society www.vsb.org 22 VIRGINIA LAWYER | June 2019 | Vol. 68 | CONSTRUCTION LAW AND PUBLIC CONTRACTS SECTION