Case study

Revolutionising
infrastructure tendering:
Sydney Metro Project

sydney The Sydney Metro project is one of the largest rail projects in
METRO
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 (in planning)

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.

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 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.”

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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.

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.

John McLuckie, RPS Advisory Services (formerly EIG)

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Case Study

Revolutionising infrastructure
tendering: Sydney Metro Project

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January 2018