This is about different models for managing buildings or facilities - everything from waterworks through car parks to sports stadiums. A Betreibermodell, as understand it, is the variant where a company takes over the building and/or management of such a facility on behalf of another organisation , e.g. on behalf of a public body which is required to provide a service/facility but doesn't want to run its own operation and/or doesn't have the necessary capital, skilled staff or whatever.

http://www.imia.com/documents/insurance.htm



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Note added at 49 mins (2005-03-09 15:07:29 GMT)
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Depending upon your context, you may be able to use a more specific term - \"private management of publicly-owned facilities\", for example. There is a little more at the site linked below. The problem with \"operator model\" is that I don\'t think it\'s very common in English (hence only confidence of 3) and also has other meanings (\"modelling\" of processes for research purposes, for example).

http://www.thewaterpage.com/ppp_new_projects.htm