Does P3 favour large companies? From equity financing to social equity

Ensuring equity in the participation of transportation projects promotes job creation and social justice. Federally-funded procurements have requirements about reaching the participation goal of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs), which are set by project owners (e.g. states' departments of transportation). P3 projects, with developers' input in the early stages, are believed to have more realistic goals and better performance compared to projects using Design-Bid-Build. Moreover, the developers are more conscious of the DBE requirements, as reflected in the explicit commitments in the bid proposals (sometimes detailed plans). However, the intricacies of how to effectively promote DBE performance in a P3 contract have not been examined. This paper aims to understand the effect of the DBE provisions on DBE participation performance for P3 transportation projects in the US. The study examines more than 13 P3 projects to compare the DBE provisions against the federal guideline, and using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the provisions that effectively improves DBE performance are suggested. This paper also proposes potential future studies to promote small companies' presence in P3 arrangements.