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Business View Australia - March-April 2016 77
INFRASTRUCTURE
the Council decided to take this role
upon itself and consequently split the
project into “packages” and awarded
the contracts for similar work at the
two sites.
Greg Mashiah describes how the
Council utilized this technique to ensure
the successful implementation of the
project, “We have been very fortunate
here that all our projects have been
successful, but we have also taken
lessons from each of the projects. For
example, one of the things that we did
on the first project was that we split it
up into five separate contracts.
The value of the project was such that
if we had let the whole augmentation
as a single contract it would have
been within the financial capability of
only the largest contractors, because
it was about $77 million in total. So by
splitting it up into several contracts,
the largest awarded was just about
$40 million. On the Iluka project we,
as a result of lessons learnt, reduced
that from four contract packages to
three.”
Another techniqueusedby theCouncil
was the Early Tendering Involvement
which was initially developed by New
SouthWales PublicWorks for Council’s
Shannon Creek Dam project in 2005.
This technique involves short-listing
potential construction contractors
through an Expression of Interest
process. A meeting is then held with
these potential contractors to reply to
any questions that they may have and
describe the details of the contract to
them.
Explaining the benefits of Early
Tendering Involvement, Greg Mashiah
says, “Another thing that we have used
quite extensively is that all the tenders
have been awarded using a process
where potential contractors who have
been short-listed at the beginning of a
project are given an initial risk allocation
and each is requested to provide
feedback on both design and risk
allocation to ensure that risk is placed
with the party best able to manage it.
We found the process extremely
successful because we believe it has
mitigated the cost of unknown risks and
risks are placed with the party best able
to manage them.”
The Council has excellent
relationships with its
contractors
The Council has a memorandum of
understanding for project delivery with
its project manager, New South Wales
Public Works, and it works closely with
it in terms of the GC21 relationship
contract. Additionally, the Council has
developed strong relationships with
its contractors and works with them
to ensure the smooth running of the
projects.
The contractors for the Junction
Hill, Grafton and Maclean, Lawrence,