ABSTRACT
Public agencies in charge of maintaining highways and bridges walk a fine line between cost and quality. Recently the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has adopted many changes in their procurement methods to obtain greater value for money. The new Network Outcomes Contracts (NOC) have been set up to invest where needed and give more control to the agency. This research investigates how the use of the NOC contracts influenced the quality of the assets and whether this resulted in value creation or not. It is concluded that NOC contracts take a more long-term vision approach. However, some assets were arguably kept at too high level of service; a situation that allows present reduction in expenditure. In this paper, qualitative data have been used to identify lessons learned to date. This can assist agencies and contractors in their continued drive to improve outcome based contracts, creating value in the long term.
