Sydney Metro Project

The Sydney Metro project is one of the largest rail projects in the world and the largest public transport project in Australia.

It consists of three main stages:

• Stage 1: Metro Northwest
• Stage 2: Metro City & Southwest
• Stage 3: Metro West

Sixty-six kilometres of new train lines, 12 new stations and 16 upgraded stations are approved and under construction in Stages 1 & 2, and once Stage 3 is approved, the total will reach 90 kilometres of new lines, including over 50km of tunnels. The whole project will cost approximately $30 billion (AUD) and is being run by Transport for NSW (TfNSW), a statutory authority of the New South Wales Government.

To complete this project successfully TfNSW needs to run fair, efficient and ultimately effective tendering processes for each stage of the project.

The non negotiables of such a project are:

• High levels of security for information shared with the project teams and bidders
• An efficient, fair RFI/Q&A process
• Tracking of all activity for probity/audit purposes
• Equal access to tender information for bidders
• Anonymity of bid teams in the process

These large tenders have traditionally been run across a collection of disparate systems, including email, printed documents, USB/hard drives, SharePoint, and contract management based procurement systems. There has been very little expert support or assistance to help these processes run smoothly and efficiently, for either the project team or the bidders.

RPS Advisory Services (formerly EIG), the consultancy firm that managed the first and only completed stage of the Sydney Metro process, as well the majority of Australia’s largest transport tenders, pioneered using a virtual data room solution for the large-scale transport project.

“With an email system, it’s very easy to send the wrong email to the wrong person,” said John McLuckie, founding partner of EIG. “We’ve gone from that to the current methodology, where we use systems like Ansarada where it’s all controlled and managed. Once it’s set up and it’s operating, you can’t send the wrong information to the wrong person.”

Reducing risk and increasing efficiency was also identified as a key area of improvement.

“What you need is a process that is all-encompassing,” John said, regarding the Ansarada system. “From when you start, right through to the transaction process, you ensure that all the information is captured. You’ve got permissions on who can access and who can do what within the process. You can then manage bottlenecks in your process by reporting on what needs to be done.”

Another area that requires careful management and introduces a lot of risk is the Q&A/ RFI process.

“When you put a tender out to market, the tenderers will invariably have lots of questions on what they don’t understand, any ambiguities, or what they’re thinking about innovation. So, you need to manage that process clearly and transparently,” said John. “You want to capture any questions they ask you and formally respond to them in a way that ensures they get the answers in a timely fashion.”

The file structures that these processes have are huge, and produce their own issues

According to John, processes of this scale required “a file structure that made sense, that made it easy for people to access information.” In the case of Metro Northwest, that entailed 36,000 files, all structured in an easy access format. “The ability to load up stuff quickly in large scale, and immediately make it available to tenderers at the same time and know they’ve got it; then set up the communications protocols and get people signed in. You do it once in the setup, you check it, and then it’s right and you can’t get it wrong.”

A massive risk to process failure is ensuring that the tender is run fairly and equally for all of the bidders.

John outlined the significance of this risk. “Probity and confidentiality is fundamental. One of the key principles of probity is fairness and equity, and being able to demonstrate that both proponents had equal access to all the information at the same time.

A single matter of not getting the right information to all tenderers for fair and equal access can lead to a point where they might challenge the process and it becomes unstuck. You’d then have to go back and start again - that’s an enormous loss of cost, time and reputation for all involved.”

In terms of resolving a dispute with a particular bidder, John said, “One of the risks you face is if you have information you don’t provide to tenderers and had they known it, they would have done something different.” He explained that with the Ansarada solution, “you can come in and say, ‘Yes, you had access to that. We know you looked at that document. Don’t claim you didn’t know about it.’”

In terms of their current utilisation of our solution in a tender process, John said, “We use Ansarada from EOIs to contract signing on simple contracts, through to major complex PPP infrastructure projects. It’s great for keeping the information to and from tenderers secure, along with communications within evaluation teams. It’s a relatively simple, stress-free process with great reporting to help us keep on top of things.”

Through the continued use of the solution on Sydney Metro, RPS Advisory Services has been able to further innovate their processes and push for further efficiencies in tendering processes, particularly during the evaluation phase.

RPS Advisory Services has continued to use the Ansarada solution across many projects and we are proud to have worked closely with them and other major consultancies to continue to improve the product for use on these complex projects with highly specific requirements.