In this episode of Navigating Major Programmes, Riccardo Cosentino sits down with Sherena Hussain, lawyer, global thought leader in infrastructure and advisor to new partnership and sustainable finance models, to tackle the complex question: is private capital successful in major programmes?  

“The research and the industry and the research is beginning to align in the sense that we need to begin to do things differently. Now is the time to start to challenge the paradigm and do better.” – Sherena Hussain  

Key Takeaways:

• The role private capital in infrastructure major programmes  
• The overlaying correlation and causation of politics in private capital  
• The biases of private practitioners in determining the use of private capital  
• Delivery models, risk transfer and the tools for successful major programmes  
• Systems approach to complexity  
• The collective responsibility and impact of stakeholder management

Sherena Hussain’s Published Work

• Rethinking the role of private capital in infrastructure PPPs: the experience of Ontario, Canada
• Exploring the Success of Social Infrastructure Public Private Partnerships: The Complex Case of Bridgepoint Active Healthcare in Ontario, Canada

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The conversation doesn’t stop here—connect and converse with our LinkedIn community: 

• Connect with Sherena Hussain on Linkedin
• Follow Navigating Major Programmes on LinkedIn
• Follow Riccardo Cosentino on LinkedIn
• Read Riccardo’s latest at wwww.riccardocosentino.com

Transcript:

Riccardo Cosentino  0:05  

You're listening to Navigating Major Programmes, a podcast that aims to elevate the conversations happening in the infrastructure industry and inspire you to have a more efficient approach within it. I'm your host, Riccardo Cosentino. I bring over 20 years of Major Programme Management experience. Most recently, I graduated from Oxford University Saïd Business School, which shook my belief when it comes to navigating major programmes. Now it's time to shake yours. Join me in each episode as I press the industry experts about the complexity of Major Programme Management, emerging digital trends and the critical leadership required to approach these multibillion-dollar projects. Let's see where the conversation takes us.

Riccardo Cosentino  0:53  

Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of Navigating Major Programmes. I'm here today with Sherena Hussain. How are you doing, Sherena?

Sherena Hussain  1:01  

I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you?

Riccardo Cosentino  1:04  

I'm very good. I'm very good. I'm so glad we're on this podcast together. Thank you for agreeing to join me. I've known you for a long time. But maybe for the guests that may not have seen you on CBC or seen your work on LinkedIn, can you introduce yourself briefly?

Sherena Hussain  1:21  

Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you for that. Well, my name, as you mentioned, is Shereena. Hussein. I'm a lawyer as well as an academic. In addition to being in the infrastructure space for many years, it's so interesting that Riccardo, you and I, we go back, way back, to the Infrastructure Ontario days where I was a summer associate and I was able to work alongside some of your teams. And since then, my career has taken me in different directions. Practicing as a lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault moving into academia, including affiliations with the Schulich School of Business, and also dovetailing into a variety of different international work, including affiliations with the G7 and the G20, trying to pair private capital to sustainable infrastructure projects all around the world. And now more specifically, trying to connect different types of research to actual problems that we have in the infrastructure community, more specifically, how do we make those projects bankable but also sustainable economically as well as environmentally speaking?

Riccardo Cosentino  2:26  

Okay, very interesting. So you, obviously, our path connected in the past and having this still do because I'm also still involved with private capital. I work for AtkinsRéalis doing investments into infrastructure. I have not been able to attend your courses at Schulich. But I certainly have seen them or your affiliation with the university. I mean, today, we want to talk about, obviously, private capital, but we want to also talk about major programming in general, and the challenges that major programme bring in terms of on-time delivery, on-budget delivery, and the complexity of major programmes and the multitude of stakeholders that they involve. So it's a very, very complex ecosystem. And I think I would just want to explore with you what you've picked up over the years in terms of what is the function of private capital and how can private capital at times help and at times doesn't help major programmes?

Sherena Hussain  3:34  

Yes, and first and foremost, I'm so happy that you're having this podcast series, because often we don't talk about this enough, and really being able to step back, see how well we're doing as an industry, but also, where are the rules or the ways that we can otherwise find solutions? How do we improve or at least create a dialogue around that? And with my research, and it's actually in fact, one of the reasons why I ended up doing a dovetail into academia, was really coming to the reflection point of whether or not we can do things better. And you know, as well as I do, and most of your listeners know that there has been a considerable amount of challenges that are almost endemic to major projects and the idea that items are over budget, they're never on time and then there's fallacies on how we plan and how we execute. And you can just look for the headlines from time to time, in which case, we always end up scratching our head and asking ourself, how did this happen? And that was one of the major questions that led me to move into academia and also conduct research with a bit of a slant towards private capital, but less so from a pure financial perspective, but rather looking at the role of private capital at the intersection of law, risk, as well as how that infuses some of the planning processes. So that intersectionality is quite challenging to wrap your head around, let alone do research. What I found really telling is that in the process, being able to step away from just each project stage and each project clause or project agreement, which as a lawyer, you can appreciate that's something that matters very much to what we do. But being able to step back and look at, well, how do these items interact with one another? In the context of say, are these projects able to attract private capital? What influence does this have on how the parties behave over the duration of long-term project agreements, some instance upwards of 30 years? How does that then influence the different stakeholders outside of the agreements? And then how then does different decision-makers reflect upon t...