BOT viability model for large-scale infrastructure projects

The key to a successful implementation of a build-operate-transfer (BOT) infrastructure project is in-depth analysis of all aspects related to economic, environmental, social, political, legal, and financial feasibility of the project. For these reasons, the analysis of the project feasibility decision needs a technique to include the qualitative decision factors that have a strong impact on the project. This paper aims to introduce a decomposed evaluation model developed to assess the most common significant decision factors that strongly affect the feasibility of BOT projects. The paper describes the viability decision factors that were identified and screened with the assistance of a group of industry experts. This analysis yielded 21 significant factors that would have a certain impact on the feasibility of any BOT project. These factors were classified into three relative categories forming the structure of the suggested project viability model. This model presents a new approach, based on the analytical hierarchy process technique, to evaluate the relationships between decision factors related to project feasibility determination. The new approach has been validated by information obtained from three case studies of BOT projects. The proposed approach to project feasibility evaluation aims to increase the decision maker's ability to determine the factors contributing the most to the viability to the BOT project at hand.