The Role of Maintenance and Facility Management in Logistics: A Literature Review

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review on the different ways of carrying out Facility Management and related topics in order to uncover that there is limited research regarding the impact of Facility Management on the logistics and operational performance of warehouses. Design/methodology/approach - Four different focus areas have been identified and for each one different methodologies and streams of research have been studied. Findings - The study underlines the importance of Facility Management for the logistics operations; therefore it supports the notion that investments aiming at preserving the status of the building and service components of warehouses are crucial. Originality/value - This paper aims to suggest to Facility Management managers that they can contribute to enhance business performance by designing effective Facility Management strategie

Risks in Project Finance Initiatives: Current Trends and Future Directions

This thesis is an analysis of Public Private Partnership (PPP). PPP refers to the provision of public assets and service through the participation of the government, the private sector and the consumers. The purpose is to analyze the main risks involved in a PPP initiative and to understand how they affect its capital structure. To this aim, different datasets have been analyzed in order to trace consistent and coherent lessons. After that, this thesis aims at proposing PPP models for innovative project in the Smart City context, based on the assumption that innovative financial schemes can fit innovative projects. In particular several PPPs for Smart City projects have been analyzed and a Project Finance contract for the replacement of traffic light lamps has been proposed so that the applicability of the financial tool in new fields of application have been tested. The success of a PF initiative is strictly related to a careful analysis of all the risks associated with the project. As a matter of fact, many risks could occur during the life of the project and they can significantly affect its outcomes. For this reason risks have been categorized in sources and associated to their indicators. For each indicator, several parameters have been identified. The main sources of risk are Country, Financial, Market and Construction. First a dataset of worldwide toll road has been analyzed. The private concessionaire that constructs the infrastructure collects revenues generated by users, and the infrastructure by itself represents a solid collateral. The analysis highlights that inflation rate, the investment size, the construction duration, the financial strength of the Special Purpose Vehicle and the number of partners has a significant influence with the share of the equity into the total investment. This study might help the purpose of providing better opportunities for sponsors to improve the equity profitability and for lending agencies to better handle with risks associated with the debt supply. The analysis has been then focused on the British market, which is one of the most important ones and wherein the Project Finance is actually developed and the legislative context is well defined. Based on the idea that the Unitary Charge (UC) periodically corresponded by the public authority (and in turn the capital structure) is associated with the project risk profile, the study investigates risks that might have significant impacts on the UC of a PF hospital project. The study demonstrates that it is possible to achieve a higher level of Value for Money (VFM) in PF hospital projects within a good economic and political environment. In Italy the PF market has rapidly grown, in light of the need for the public sector to find a feasible way to construct or renovate infrastructures in a context of scarce public finance. Based on past projects developed in Italy an empirical analysis has been carried out in order to identify the main aspects that can impact on the success of a PF initiative. As a matter of fact, evidence has shown that not all the projects appear to fit for PF, and often a project fails to go further out of the early contract procurement phases. Therefore, there is the need to understand what are the key factors affecting the construction of a PF initiative. The study shows that large-sized projects developed in wealthy conditions in terms of political and economic stability and levels of GDP, have good chances to be constructed, especially whenever the time is given to parties to negotiate the contract provision. The analysis provides with a hint for policy makers to learn that PF is a valuable system to be used in stable and developed environments for large projects with little time pressure. PF mechanism was launched in Italy in 1999 and after ten years the Italian market is the second largest one in Europe, especially in the healthcare sector. However, financially freestanding privately-funded PF hospitals are rare and the capital structure of most projects requires a considerable share of public funding. The most proper amount of money invested by the public authority should cover the non-self-financing (and therefore the riskier ones) of the investment costs, but it often happens that the level of public contribution exceeds this limit. The results of the analysis highlight that the financial strength of the SPV, the number of services that are granted to the private partners, the level of borrowing of the public authority, and the duration of the concession period appear to be significant factors of the public fraction of financing required to deliver the project. These results originate some important considerations about the relevance of risks in the development of PF initiatives. PF better fits in stable politic and economic environments, but at the same time it is largely adopted in emerging countries with large demand of new infrastructures and high level of risk (in terms of level of transparency, corruptions, currency exchange). From a financial perspective a robust SPV is likely to better deal with the project with a positive impact on the capital structure. The market risk is associated with the number of customers that exploit the facility and the number of services that privates manage. If the demand of services is not enough to generate sustainable profits, the public party could reimburse an additional fee, in order to cover for this risk. The project risk is mainly related to the complexity of the project in terms of the number of partners in the SPV and the investment size. The last part of the thesis is associated to the future and potential scenarios associated to PF and more in general to PPP scheme. In fact the aim is to propose PPP models in the smart city (SC) arena, a promising field of innovation and investments. SC appears to be as a new paradigm to carry out innovation that marks a shift between traditional way of completing technology-push processes and the new approach based on the user’s needs. In this political and economic scenario, the PPP seems to be a solution for the development of smart projects and the design of PPP models should become an integral part of the SC agendas. As demonstrated in the development of traditional infrastructure, the involvement of privates allows to manage more efficiently the project.The analysis shows that PF is more applicable in case of projects with tangible assets, and the main strength of this scheme is the clear separation between the cash flows of the SPV and the cash flows of the investors. On the contrary, PF is more expensive in terms of contractual and transactional costs. These aspects related to PF have fostered to develop a proposal model for the application of this financial scheme in the Municipality of Torino. In particular the project is based on the replacement of the traditional lamps of the traffic lights with new ones exploiting the innovative LED technology that is supposed to guarantee savings in terms of energy consumption and maintenance cost. The project has proved to be bankable and profitable if the Public Authority corresponds a fee that includes both the availability of the lamps and the maintenance costs for ten years. On the contrary the project is only bankable and profits are not guaranteed if the fee paid by the public is only associated with the availability. The findings have validated the applicability of PF even in case of projects without assets systems as collateral and with small-medium investments size. Some first general guidelines for the policy maker are provided in order to foster the development of SC initiative even in a period of financial public shortage. Project Finance, and more in general the PPP, can be the engine of an efficient exploitation of the potentiality offered by the SC

A Framework to Use Public-Private Partnership for Smart City Projects

The concept of Smart City has been emerging as a strategic set of integrated initiatives encompassing infrastructures, technology and digital services for the purpose of enhancing the quality of life of citizens. However, the development and implementation of Smart City projects require considerable investments that are difficult to fund with traditional public finance. In this context, Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) appear to be suitable solutions to overcome the shortage of public finance and cuts on public spending. However, the adoption of PPP forms for Smart City projects has not been fully explored and only experimentally applied so far. In order to promote the usage of PPP to finance Smart City initiatives, this paper proposes some PPP financial instruments and discusses the associated strengths and weaknesses. In particular, the use of Project Finance, Revenue Sharing and Social Impact Bonds are suggested as sound alternatives and suitable sources of financing for Smart City project

Risk factors influencing the debt leverage of project financing initiatives in the energy industry

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to understanding the crucial influence of risks on the capital structure of project financing (PF) initiatives in the energy sector. Design/methodology/approach – The debt leverage of a capital investment is selected as the response variable, and its relation with select identified risk factors is examined using a regression analysis on a data set of 72 projects carried out all over the world in the energy industry. Findings – Results have highlighted that the debt leverage is significantly influenced by several sources of risk measured through specific indicators, namely, country stability index, the construction duration, the concession period and the average size of partners. Therefore, country, project and special purpose vehiclerelated risks have been shown to have an impact on the debt leverage of a PF scheme. Research limitations/implications – The results could support both investors and lenders to better define the financial leverage of projects delivered under a PF mechanism. In particular, the study could help to have a better understanding of the main factors that influence the debt leverage in PF initiatives. Originality/value – This paper contributes to filling the lack of works addressing the relationship between risk factors and capital structure in PF projects. In this way, this research leads to a better understanding of the risk factors that influence the capital structure of a PF initiative, and they have, therefore, been proposed as a basis for the establishment of improved methods to design refined capital structures

Digital Dashboards for Smart City Governance: a Case Project to Develop an Urban Safety Indicator Model

This paper illustrates a case project to design a digital dashboard for governing the urban safety of an Italian city and proposes a methodology for the definition of a set of safety measurement indi- cators. Results show that the method is easy to be used to identify the most crucial areas of the city, in several domains of application that have been identified. The study can substantially support policy makers in the development of their strategies and in the measurement of the effectiveness of their decisions

Value Proposition for Sustainable Last-Mile Delivery. A Retailer Perspective

The sustainability of last-mile (LM) freight delivery is crucial to add value to the stakeholders in the distribution chain. However, its achievement is often hindered by a poor consideration of their needs by both literature and practice. The goal of this paper is to address the point of view of local retailers by exploring their needs about innovative LM delivery services and identifying sustainable value propositions (VP). A survey was submitted to retailers operating in the limited traffic zone of Torino (Italy). The survey data were analyzed by a factor analysis using a principal component analysis (PCA) to extract the factors. A correlation analysis was also conducted between the needs and selected contextual variables. The results show that retailers accept higher costs for more reliable deliveries and stock reduction. Retailers also correlate punctuality and flexibility because flexible and on-time deliveries allow for better inventory management, higher control, and, in turn, improved customer service level. This work is one of the first research attempts to quantify local retailers’ LM delivery needs and provides guidelines about how to design value-added logistics services. Moreover, from a practical point of view, the analysis shows the main VP that managers and practitioners should consider in the development of LM initiatives

Investigating the environmental awareness of Logistics Service Providers. The case of Italy

Environmental sustainability in transportation operations is acquiring an increasing importance in recent years and a lot of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) are including green practices in their business. However, the interests of logistics operators and the related level of awareness about the adoption of environmental friendly practices are still not deeply analyzed in literature. Therefore, the proposed paper is intended to investigate the perception of LSPs about the environmental issues and their willingness of pursuing future green strategies. To this end, based on a literature analysis aimed at identifying a comprehensive list of green practices, a questionnaire survey is administered to LSPs operating in the Italian market. The data gathered are then analyzed via the Kruskal-Wallis test and the questionnaire outcomes discussed with the LSPs participating to the survey through face to face interviews. Results show that the environment is highly considered by the freight carriers of the sample, both small and large ones. In addition, personnel involved in different company roles appear to pay diverse levels of attention to the sustainability issue. In particular, the reduction of pollutant is considered more crucial for employees in charge of dealing with operations (median equal to 5) and reverse logistics is perceived less important by managers (median equal to 3). The outcomes of the study might support companies to achieve sustainability and promote the green awareness issue. At the same time, policy makers might be facilitated by this study in designing environmental friendly programs in the logistics field