The public works financing community is divided in its response to a Brookings Institution policy paper this month advocating creation of a “national PPP unit to support bottom-up infrastructure investment” in all types of assets as part of a national infrastructure policy.

The PPP unit proposed by Robert Puentes, director of Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative at Brookings, would provide state and local governments with “support and technical assistance needed from the procurement stage through long-term management of projects by helping public actors determine the best Value for Money investment, assess long-term economic benefit of projects, and increase capacity to deal with contract changes over the life of the PPP.”