By J.P. Villamizar – President, Hill Advisory & Chief Growth Officer, Hill International

Earlier this year, a major transportation project broke ground in Georgia that generated headlines for an unexpected reason. What many expected would require significant public funding instead produced a multi-billion-dollar concession payment to the state. Much of the ensuing debate focused on whether the outcome was good or bad for the travelling public, and reasonable people will continue to disagree on that question.

To me, however, the more interesting story lies elsewhere. Long before construction broke ground, the procurement demonstrated what can happen when agencies begin by asking broader commercial questions about an asset’s long-term value rather than focusing exclusively on how it will be delivered. Whether or not that particular model is appropriate elsewhere is almost beside the point. The conversation itself reflects a broader shift that I now see taking place across global infrastructure, thinking beyond project delivery to rethink the commercial structure of how infrastructure projects are delivered.

For generations, infrastructure organizations have rightly focused on delivering projects safely, on schedule and within budget. Those disciplines remain fundamental, and they always will. Public trust depends on our ability to execute well.

But today’s environment demands something more. Governments are being asked to deliver increasingly complex infrastructure while facing constrained budgets, aging assets and growing public expectations. In that context, success must be measured by the long-term value that infrastructure creates for the communities and economies it serves.

Those conversations all point toward the same conclusion: the business case must come before the delivery model.

Too often, organizations begin by debating procurement. Should this project be Design-Build? Progressive Design-Build? CM/GC? A Public-Private Partnership? Each of those delivery models has an important role to play, and each can be the right solution under the appropriate circumstances.

The challenge is that those discussions sometimes begin before the more fundamental questions have been answered. What outcome are we ultimately trying to achieve? How should this asset contribute to economic growth, mobility or resilience over the next fifty years? What risks should the public sector retain, and which can be transferred without compromising the public interest? What opportunities exist to improve long-term value that may not be immediately apparent through a traditional project delivery lens?

Only once those questions have been rigorously explored should a delivery model be selected.

When the delivery model becomes the starting point, agencies naturally begin optimizing around that decision. The discussion focuses on procurement, construction and execution. When the business case comes first, however, the conversation expands. It considers the asset as part of a broader capital portfolio. It examines commercial strategy alongside engineering. It evaluates long-term outcomes rather than short-term transactions.

That broader perspective creates room for better decisions—sometimes leading to conventional procurement, sometimes to collaborative delivery or private investment, and increasingly to opportunities not previously considered. The objective is not to advocate for one procurement model over another, but to ensure that whichever model is selected is the result of deliberate strategy rather than a starting assumption.

I believe this evolution will define the next generation of infrastructure leadership.

Recently, a public-sector client approached my team to advise on a major capital program. Notably, they weren’t asking us to validate a preferred delivery model. They asked us to challenge the underlying assumptions—to identify alternative revenue sources, explore commercial opportunities and test whether the program could create more value than originally envisioned. That request would have been unusual a decade ago. Today, it is becoming increasingly common, and it reflects a broader evolution in how infrastructure leaders are thinking about capital investment.

Infrastructure has always required long-term thinking. Today, that long-term thinking must begin even earlier. Before selecting a procurement model, before determining a financing structure and before taking a project to market, we should first ask a more important question:

What is the greatest long-term value this asset can create, and what is the best strategy for achieving it? Only then should we decide how to deliver it.