Industry Affairs
The Industry Affairs program is focused on co-creating solutions with our industry partners to deliver city shaping projects that not only create thriving places but are built in a sustainable and responsible way through early industry and workforce engagement.
Through this program, we are working closely with key industry associations to understand their members' challenges and work with them to develop solutions.
Organisation data rooms
Members of the following workshops can find links to their relevant secure data rooms below. Please note, access to the below data rooms is by invitation-only.
If you have any questions, please contact the Industry Engagement and Development team at ied@transport.nsw.gov.au
Co-creating solutions with the Australian Constructors Association and Consult Australia
In 2023, Transport for NSW worked with both the Australian Contractors Association (ACA) and Consult Australia (CA) to introduce a new engagement program to explore opportunities to streamline project delivery.
The program kicked off with an Australian-first, a tripartite workshop in June, bringing together Government and important industry bodies to identify and improve ways of working on our sites.
The workshop identified three key areas of opportunity:
streamlining the design review process
rationalising prescribed personnel requirements
360 project health checks for both client and contractor teams
Three working groups were established, who met regularly over the next six-months, to work through how all parties could shift the dial on these complex areas to achieve a more productive industry.
The groups presented their findings and key recommendations at the second combined workshop held in early December.
Transport is now considering the working group findings and investigating potential pilot opportunities.
Workshop Highlights
ACA/CA June workshop
ACA/CA December workshop
In 2024, Transport worked with the Australian Constructors Association (ACA), Consult Australia (CA) and the Civil Contractors Federation NSW (CCF) to explore how we can incentivise greater innovation across the project lifecycle.
The 2024 program focused on innovation and at the program’s annual All-In workshop we identified a number of opportunities to work smarter, not harder; to deliver successful projects.
The top four opportunities to incentivise innovation were:
Supporting a culture that empowers decision making
Establishing a decision-making framework to support projects through delivery
Exploring implementation of KPI’s that incentivise innovation and innovation sharing
Transparency on risk allocation through procurement processes.
Incentivising innovation will be the key focus of the Industry Affairs program moving forward, as we work with industry to develop concepts and achieve positive industry outcomes.
The All-In workshop also included updates from the three working groups born out of the 2023 program, with progress made across Design Review, Personnel Requirements and the 360 Health Check working groups.
Design review
The original goal of the design review working group was to develop a systematic, integrated and transparent design review framework for identifying the required review authorities and timings across all projects.
In achieving this objective, it was clear to the working group there were a number of other opportunities to pursue.
Together we developed recommendations for further implementation across four sub-working groups created at the start of the 2024 program.
The sub working groups:
Trialled a design collaboration framework, proposing improvements across the design review process including Scope of Work and Technical Criteria draft updates.
Reviewed the role of independent certifiers / independent verifiers on projects and made recommendations for next steps.
Identified potential improvements in the way Transport engages with industry through our pre-qualification schemes.
Established recommendations and started implementation of improvements to Transport managed Concessions to Technical Standards.
Personnel requirements
Tasked with reviewing the use of personnel requirements and opportunities to avoid unnecessary specifications on future projects, the group made progress on multiple fronts.
As a result, a standardised CV for procurement has been implemented, to increase efficiency in the tender process. Additionally, the language, ‘unless otherwise approved by the Principal’, as an exception to the prescriptive requirements is also being rolled out in all new contracts.
Additionally, the working group explored pathways for personnel to seek ‘years experience’ exemption, specifically to help improve diversity, opportunity and skills shortage. Transport is using this work as a foundation to consider options to enable new pathways to key personnel positions, including relaxing stringent experience requirements, to sponsor diversity and expand the industry talent pool.
Further, because of the working group, the Epping Bridge Project procurement will trial not restricting who our delivery partners put forward based on role criteria or years of experience, allowing them to propose their preferred organisational structure and personnel for the project.
360 health check
This group identified as an industry that we are good at reviewing a project based on time, cost and schedule but not as effective at reviewing the cultural, health and wellbeing of projects.
To address this shortcoming, we have developed the Project Culture and Health Check (PHC) Tool to use on projects. This tool will be completed by both Transport and our delivery partners as part of the project review process. Reviewing the responses will allow Transport and our delivery partners to collectively identify issues early and find cases of best practice we can apply to other projects.
Workshop highlights
Incentivising innovation
