CLIENT'S OBJECTIVES AND PROJECT OVERVIEW:

The new motorway included interchanges to the north and south to accommodate connections at either end of the project. It linked Sydney’s north to the Orbital network and forms part of the National Highway route. As part of the wider Sydney road network, NorthConnex provides a direct connection from north to western and southern roads – keeping Sydney and the NSW economy moving.

The $3 billion project, consisting of a design and construction budget of $2.65 billion in addition to land and project delivery costs, is funded through toll charges with a contribution from the NSW and Federal Governments of up to $405 million each.

The Project Sponsors received an unsolicited proposal for the development, D&C and operation and maintenance of NorthConnex from Transurban. They required assistance from ConnellGriffin’s Advisors to develop the procurement strategy for Stage 3 of the proposal process.

OUR ROLE:

ConnellGriffin’s Advisors led the integrated team through the design, development and implementation of the procurement process including:

industry briefing and market sounding phase
expression of interest phase
tender documentation production
tender period including the interactive process
tender evaluation phase, and
negotiation and contract award phase.

ConnellGriffin’s Advisors developed the unique procurement process including development of the EOI and RFT documentation, managed the preparation of all tender documentation including the SWTC, led the interactive tender process including the market sounding process, facilitated the evaluation process, and assisted in the negotiation and preparation of final documentation.

In addition, our Advisors led the risk process throughout the procurement phase in conjunction with Transurban, RMS and other advisors involved in the transaction.

After financial close, our Advisors continued to support Transurban in the administration of the contract through conducting audits on the performance of the Independent Certifier and the effectiveness of the design review process involving the Contractor, Independent Certifier, RMS and the NorthConnex Project Company. These audits provided assurance that contract requirements were being met, and that the design was being developed within a sufficiently rigorous design review and risk management framework.

KEY ISSUES:

This was a high-profile project that required a complex, innovative procurement process to meet extremely tight timeframes. In response, our Advisors developed and successfully delivered a strategy to progress the assessment, resulting in the completed transaction phase.

KEY OUTCOMES:

Our Advisors supported Transurban and RMS in the achievement of some significant outcomes, including:

obtaining approval of Transurban’s unsolicited proposal for the development, D&C and operation and maintenance of NorthConnex
developing processes to allow the procurement phase to run in parallel with the planning approval
completing the market sounding phase in less than three weeks, which resulted in quality feedback from the industry to help improve the tender process
shortlisting EOI applicants in less than four weeks from when EOI documents were released
developing high quality tender documents that incorporated unique processes to drive innovation (including development of mandatory functional requirements that had to be met, as opposed to the development of a reference design), and
completing the detailed evaluation process to identify a preferred tenderer, in less than six weeks.

Our Advisors supported Transurban to ensure that the tight timeframes were met and that the preferred tenderer’s offer resulted in an under-written price that was less than the project budget.

The procurement model (Accelerated Procurement) designed and implemented on NorthConnex was a first of its type. ConnellGriffin’s Advisors led and managed the procurement process from market sounding right through to financial close on this $3 billion complex road tunnel procurement. The timeframes achieved set a benchmark for the industry. In addition, due to the quality of the documentation, the WestConnex Delivery Authority (now Sydney Motorway Corporation) requested to re-use the documents as a starting point for the D&C Deed and RMS Project Deed for Stages 1B and 2 of WestConnex.

As part of the handover to the Developers and MRPV’s full-time cost controllers, ConnellGriffin led group and individual training in the use of the newly developed reporting tool.