Performance Contracts: Shaking Up The Municipal Water Market?

Published on by in Business

Performance Contracts: Shaking Up The Municipal Water Market?

Performance contracts promise to shake up the municipal water market — and to open the drinking water and wastewater sectors to new heights of innovation, efficiency, and funding opportunities. As Steve Hoffman wrote inPlanet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource , "the water industry is being rationalized from a delivery-based approach to a solution-based system."

Instead of manufacturers delivering equipment to an installation and driving away, or consulting engineers wrapping up most of their work once a new facility is online, performance contracts put the risk — and the reward — of performance on the supplier side. Contracted operators deliver water for a negotiated sum, or earn their pay as incentives for achieving agreed-upon goals — for instance, cost savings over previous systems. Utilities reduce their up-front expenditures, their risk and, often, the need to go to voters for bond measures.

Read more:http://j.mp/Lh8HAS

Media