Therefore, speeding up projects does not start with speeding up tenders, but with improving what happens before the tender. A serious investor is not only looking for an attractive project, but a project that is viable and executable. He wants to know from the beginning the scope of the project, the readiness of the land and permits, how the risks of design, construction, operation, and financing will be distributed, and what the government's commitments, revenue sources, and mechanisms for handling change and disputes are. And every question that is not resolved early may return later in the form of a higher price, longer negotiations, or a delay in financial closure.
In the UK, one of the most important lessons in managing major projects is that the investment decision is preceded by an integrated business case (Business Case), not just a financial feasibility study. The project is tested economically, commercially, financially, and operationally before going to the market. The UAE experience provides a complementary lesson: government speed does not mean shortening controls, but shortening the confusion between controls. When the authorities, responsibilities, and technical, financial, and legal paths are clear from the beginning, decision-making becomes faster without sacrificing governance.
From here, the 392 projects can be an opportunity to develop a faster executive methodology for major projects in Jordan. The starting point is to classify projects according to readiness, impact, size, and complexity. There are projects ready for tender, others that need studies or approvals or handling ownership and financing issues, and strategic projects that deserve a special implementation path. The requirement is that no project remains without a clear answer to four questions: Where is it? What is holding it up? Who has the decision to remove the obstacle? And when should it be resolved?
In strategic projects, a project implementation room can be adopted, not as an additional committee, but as a small team that brings together the project owner, technical, financial, legal, and commercial expertise, and works according to a single schedule for decisions, obstacles, and deadlines. Most importantly, each project should have a clear implementation officer; multiple agencies may be necessary, but multiple responsibilities may lead to their loss.
As for the partnership with the private sector, it should not be understood only as a means of financing. A successful PPP is a risk engineering before it is a financing engineering. The rule is to place each risk with the party best able to manage it at the lowest cost. If a risk is transferred to the investor that they cannot control, it will not disappear, but will put its price in their offer. Therefore, the risk distribution matrix should start early and not at the end of the contract preparation.
Another important tool is market testing before tendering. Through transparent and organized dialogue with investors, financiers, and operators, the project's viability can be tested, the revenue structure, the contract duration, and the risks that may increase the cost, before discovering these issues after the tender is launched.
A method for measuring project progress should also be developed. The measure is not the number of meetings and correspondences, but the obstacle that was removed and the phase that was completed. An index can be adopted that measures the duration from project approval to tendering, from tendering to award, from award to financial closure, and from there to the start of implementation. This way, we know where the project is actually slowing down; what we do not measure in time is difficult for us to speed up.
Standardizing the core principles of major project documents, from risk distribution and guarantees to change mechanisms and financial closure, saves time, improves contract quality, and gives the investor greater ability to anticipate the contractual environment, rather than each agency starting with each project from a blank page.
Today, Jordan has a real opportunity to build on the momentum created by the Economic Modernization Vision. In major projects, capital is important, but time is also capital; every month we shorten between project approval and implementation start means an earlier investment, a job opportunity that starts earlier, and a service that reaches the citizen earlier.
Jordan has determined what it wants to achieve and has set before it 392 projects. The next step is for the speed of implementation itself to become part of the project's design, management, and measurement. The real achievement is not just in the number of projects, but in our ability to shorten the distance between decision and impact.
Lawyer and legal expert
yazan.haddadin@haddadinlaw.com
