Book excerpt: Throughout the world there is a growing demand for high quality public services to support socio-economic development. Infrastructure is central to improving the level of public services and the quality of the built environment. But in key areas such as transport, energy, water, healthcare, education and communications, public resources are not sufficient to keep pace with this demand. As the public sector struggles to keep up, the private sector is increasingly involved in the procurement of economic and social infrastructure. Until now procurement strategies have often concentrated on the mechanisms and the ‘bricks and mortar’ without a thorough analysis of the processes and their implications for services. The result is that all too often infrastructure projects are implemented in an ad hoc and fragmented way. In this ground-breaking book, Rodney Howes and Herbert Robinson provide a holistic approach to infrastructure provision that facilitates infrastructure delivery aimed at continuously improving the level and quality of services. Critical issues of policy and strategy, implementation, and operational aspects are examined within the context of sustainability. By emphasising the importance of procuring infrastructure within an overall national or regional development policy and strategy, the authors have demonstrated the importance of linking investment and resource decisions to local social, economic and environmental needs. With each chapter carefully written to reflect part of the infrastructure delivery chain and illustrated with practical examples and case studies from around the world, this book offers a new blueprint for infrastructure investment and resource management.