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McBains Cooper wins PPP consultancy contract in Medellin, Colombia

Construction consultants McBains Cooper has won a contract to help improve public-private partnership skill for the Colombian city of Medellin. McBains will train Medellin PPP Agency to help implement PPP procured projects in the city, Colombia’s second largest. Apart from road works that will include a new urban highway, projects will be across the transportation sector as well as in education such as school construction. Santiago Klein, international director at McBains Cooper, said the objective of
May 18, 2016 Read time: 3 mins
Construction consultants McBains Cooper has won a contract to help improve public-private partnership skill for the Colombian city of Medellin.

McBains will train Medellin PPP Agency to help implement PPP procured projects in the city, Colombia’s second largest. Apart from road works that will include a new urban highway, projects will be across the transportation sector as well as in education such as school construction.

Santiago Klein, international director at McBains Cooper, said the objective of the project will be to increase the professional capacity of the Agency by the training of its staff, “which we will do in Colombia and the UK, so that the Agency will be fully equipped to implement the PPP projects and programs to be developed by the city of Medellin”.

The company has established a series of guidelines and frameworks, including key performance indicators, payment mechanisms and operational audit processes for schools, hospitals, roads, airports and public buildings to help the country achieve its PPP objectives.

The contract is the firm’s latest win in Medellin. It has already been appointed by Colombia’s National Planning Department to assist in the development of intermodal stations for a new light rail transit line in the city.

McBains Cooper said it has also been working with private sector clients to advise on a number of PPP projects, including the development of Medellin Football Stadium.

%$Linker: 2 Internal <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 2 26092 0 oLinkExternal In an exclusive interview Visit Interview page false /categories/traffic-focus-highway-management/features/colombias-ani-agency-is-driving-forward-the-4g-ppp-programme/ false false%>, Luis Fernando Andrade Moreno, president of Colombia's National Infrastructure Agency - ANI – told World Highways of the importance of getting PPP contracts to the country’s infrastructure development.

McBains Cooper has experience of delivering PPP projects across Colombia, such the country’s first ever social housing project and construction of a series of public libraries and the restoration of eight museums.

Since enacting the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Law (Act 1508) in 2012, Colombia has kick-started a number of major infrastructure projects across the country. The government has targeted the upgrading of roads, railways and airports in deals worth collectively $25 billion by 2018. The imminent peace deal between the Colombian government and Farc rebels is also set to open up new projects.

In the past five years Colombia has emerged as one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies, with GDP growth close to 5%.  Despite a fall in the oil price, the IMF still estimates that 2016 growth will reach 2.7%, second of all Latin American countries. Construction in particular is growing at over 10% annually.

Colombia also ranks highest of all the Latin American countries in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index.

McBains Cooper which operates in the UK, Europe, the Mediterranean rim, Latin America and the United States.

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