DALLAS—This past spring, Balfour Beatty Campus Solutions was in the news for public-private partnerships at two major Texas universities—a housing and retail project at the University of Texas at Dallas and new housing for the University of Houston's Victoria campus—plus the second phase of a P3-funded student housing development at the University of Iowa's main campus in Iowa City, IA. All three projects are part of a wave that has seen the use of P3s double over the past five years. While not the standard go-to funding mechanism in academia, P3s look especially appealing in an era of both states and universities keeping a tighter grip on the purse strings, Josh Smith tells GlobeSt.com.

“It's about leveraging private-sector capital,” says Smith, a Balfour Beatty Campus Solutions VP who joined the company in 2011 to help schools bridge the financing gap. “Typically, universities that want to finance these projects are not able to get funding from the state or by issuing debt themselves. It's attractive because the private sector can leverage their own balance sheets and move a little quicker on delivering the facilities. Speed to market is a big component of that.”

Smith and other experts from both the private and public sectors will provide insights on how P3s work when RealShare Student Housing comes to Dallas next month. The eighth annual conference is scheduled for Sept. 1 and 2 at the Ritz Carlton; click here for more information.

Even if a school is in a position to issue its own bonds, “universities want to make the best use of their balance sheet capacity,” Smith says. “They see auxiliary facilities such as student housing, recreation and dining facilities getting paid for through student revenue but getting financed through the private sector. They're saving their borrowing capacity to go out and build academic research facilities."

P3s have been in use in one form or another since the 1990s across a variety of sectors, Smith points out. “Over the past five or six years, they've evolved into an equity model versus tax-exempt structures,” he says. “You've also seen universities looking to deliver facilities other than housing.” Among these, he says, are facilities for academic research and recreational purposes.

“There are several universities across the country that are exploring this,” says Smith. “In California, it's been done a couple of times. The University of Kansas recently moved forward on a public-private partnership for academic facilities. They see the P3 model as a way to leverage private sector funding to do these projects. They still have to rely on funding that may come through the state or through grants; not all buildings are revenue-producing, so universities have to get creative in the ways that they pay for these projects.”

In next month's panel discussion, “The Evolving P3 Model,” Smith and his fellow panelists will explore how this financing model is continuing to change for the better. They'll also discuss the challenges as well as successes in implementing P3 projects. For more information, visit the RealShare Student Housing site.

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