Practitioners’ Perspectives on Value for Money (VfM) Analysis

Value for Money (VfM) analysis is the primary mechanism by which U.S. state agencies evaluate whether a project should be delivered through a public-private partnership (P3) or conventional public procurement. While the methodology has been widely applied, relatively little is known about how practitioners conduct these analyses and apply VfM in practice. This study addresses that gap through semi-structured interviews with 12 practitioners participating across 10 interview sessions involving VfM analyses for U.S. highway projects. Framework analysis was used to examine practitioner perspectives on VfM objectives, assumption development, risk assessment, financing, discounting, and critical success factors. The findings indicate that VfM practice is shaped by funding constraints, reliance on professional judgment, and the quality of stakeholder engagement. Participants described project environments in which fiscal considerations strongly influenced procurement decisions and payment mechanisms. Across all major modeling components, practitioners relied heavily on historical benchmarks, expert judgment, and comparable project experience due to the limited availability of project-specific empirical data during the pre-procurement stage. Communication, stakeholder engagement, and the transparency of assumptions were consistently identified as important contributors to analytical credibility and reliability. The study contributes a practitioner-centered perspective to the VfM literature and highlights the importance of strengthening the institutional foundations of VfM practice through improved data collection, post-completion evaluation, transparency, independent review and public-sector analytical capacity. The findings suggest that enhancing the quality of information and governance surrounding VfM analysis may be as important as methodological refinement in improving future procurement evaluations.