“The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the United States needs $4.56 trillion to keep its deteriorating infrastructure current but only has funding to cover less than half of necessary infrastructure spending — leaving the at least country $2.0 trillion short through the next decade,” write authors Nilmini Rubin and Jennifer Hara for SSIR. “Some argue that public-private partnerships (PPPs or P3s) are the answer. We agree that they can play an important role-if done well. … The problem is that PPPs can be very hard to design and implement. And since they can involve commitments of millions or even billions of dollars, a PPP failure can be awful. … In our experience, it can be useful for would-be partners to practice engaging in a PPP before they dive into a live project. At our organization, Tetra Tech’s Institute for Public-Private Partnerships, for example, we use an online and multiplayer game — the P3 Game — to help make PPPs work.”