Global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) has announced the addition of veteran public-private partnership (P3) professional Tom Kness who joins as Senior Director of Public Sector Services practice in A&M’s Los Angeles office.

Kness brings more than 25 years of public and private sector procurement, operations and senior management experience. During the last 15 years, he has worked exclusively on P3 projects valued at more than $13 billion in aviation, commuter rail, parking, lighting, higher education, vertical infrastructure and toll roads. He brings deep knowledge of project cultivation and execution including navigating complex government regulations; aligning stakeholders with competing interests around shared priorities; anticipating long-term funding implications for public infrastructure and helping shape public policy.

“Public-private partnerships allow municipalities and mission-driven institutions to focus on providing services and other core competencies, while addressing critical infrastructure needs, expediting projects and bringing in revenue,” said, Jay Brown, a Managing Director with A&M’s Public Sector Services practice. “Tom’s extensive operational experience in this space provides deep seeded expertise to our growing list of P3 clients.”

Notable P3 projects Kness has advised and led include:

• The public-private partnership to improve LaGuardia airport, the largest P3 airport project in North America;
• The first state-wide lighting-focused P3, which helped Michigan upgrade to LED lights on its freeways and tunnels, improving safety, efficiency and eco-friendliness, and limiting maintenance; and
• The first P3 for a large university campus, the University of California-Merced, which helped expedite construction to accommodate a rapidly growing student body.

Prior to joining A&M Kness served as Director of P3 Advisory for the multinational engineering firm AECOM. Before that, he worked for the City of Chicago for seven years as the Director of P3s, where he was involved in several ground breaking P3 transactions. Kness earned a Bachelor of Science degree in environmental science from Western Michigan University.