In 3 days Brisbane will vote. This is a particularly important one because it feels as though this city we love is at a tipping point. We know our population is growing quickly. And we’re ready for some new ideas. Ready for ideas that focus on pedestrians, public transport, green spaces, women and child-friendly spaces. All the things the most forward-thinking cities are currently doing.

The Labor, LNP and Greens candidates have put forward their plans for tackling congestion. Lord mayoral candidate Rod Harding has said Labor would spend $139 million on bikeways, with a $90 million dedicated cycle and pedestrian bridge that would link the CBD and Kangaroo Point the guts of the plan.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk recently announced $100 million would be spent over four years on bicycle infrastructure, including a 1.2km segregated bikeway along Stanley Street, linking the Gabba to the Goodwill Bridge.

Greens lord mayoral candidate Ben Pennings would spend $345 million to build two new river crossings - one between Newstead and Bulimba and the other between Toowong and West End.

Taking this one step further, Labor’s Rod Harding has announced his intention to divest from fossil fuels by not placing Council’s term deposits with financial institutions that invest in fossil fuels.

While I’m an unreserved supporter of the idea that we should be moving to a fossil fuel free future and sustainable, smart development of our cities, the obvious question is are we ready?

If we keep the focus of the conversation on developing Brisbane to be the ‘new world’ city Council has been espousing over the past several years, what does this actually mean, and how are local Brisbanites going to adapt?

According to Dr. Greg Clark, Chairman and founder of ‘The Business of Cities’, a New World City is a globally connected city. It must have a metropolitan economy in excess of $100 billion, with globally oriented business clusters and must be "at least in the top 100" for commercial investment and visitors, innovation or brand and be in the top 20 in at least one area. This is critical to standing Brisbane alongside emerging new world cities, including Abu Dhabi, Auckland, Cape Town, Copenhagen, San Diego, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Vancouver, and Vienna.

Dr Clark suggests that "the path that leads to these cities succeeding is the smaller size, the specialisation, the life/work balance. Efficient infrastructure is absolutely key for them because that's the way the liveability is delivered."

If connectivity and efficient infrastructure are critical, then yes, we must invest in smart planning and delivery of new public infrastructure that provides greater access for the most number of users between the developing community and economic hubs.

Brisbane’s 2022 New World City Action Plan recommends mapping Brisbane’s key districts and precincts by industry clusters and defining attributes, to identify and prioritise trends and opportunities. To some extent this may require a decentralisation of the CBD and a redistribution of certain industries away from the busy city center.

This is the obvious solution to relieving congestion an

d reducing the strain on our existing transport infrastructure, so why do we persist with political rhetoric that focuses only on encouraging greater numbers of commuters into the CBD?

It’s a fairly basic and logical argument to predict where this is leading. We have a finite amount of space in our CBD bordered by established residential communities and the Brisbane River. Expansion out to the CBD fringes may buy us some time, as does redevelopment of older, redundant space. But ultimately, by encouraging commercial growth with centralised, traditional enterprise, we will continually be looking to compromise our planning laws to build higher and increase our transport infrastructure capacity.

This is the logical conclusion given our reluctance to accept flexible work arrangements, unconventional business hours and remote working…

So again, the question we should ask ourselves is are we ready?

Yesterday the Qld Resources Council asked for financial help from the State government to keep struggling mines open and avoid the loss of thousands of jobs.

The Council’s CEO Michael Roche, speaking on 612 ABC Brisbane said these are “grim times” with 1 in every 3 Queensland coal mines running at a loss and LNG and Base Metal mines also in trouble.

The Council will soon meet with a QLD government jobs committee to “have a conversation” about providing “some relief” for mines. He emphasised the cyclical nature of demand for resources. We know the coal industry, in particular, is experiencing a major downturn. It continues to feel the effects of China’s economic slowdown, reduction in coal consumption and diversification into nuclear, wind, hydro and solar power.

Mr Roche believes our focus should be on keeping mines open and ensuring royalties continue to flow into the State budget until it recovers. Which, he says, it will – via demand from India and the rest of Asia.

Traditionally, mining is an industry weighed down by all-or-nothing gambles, with high cost assets that generally only have a single purpose and a finite lifespan (10 - 20 years, the life of the mine). There aren't too many other businesses that are reliant on market volatility and a 'quick hit' cash grab.

Let’s compare this to ‘new tech’ start-ups which are able to tinker, adjust or completely reinvent their business model and product/service to suit demand. There's a benefit to being able to keep a business lean and able to change tack to suit market conditions or the needs of the consumer base.

Given what appears to be an inevitable shift to clean, sustainable (and over the life of the asset), cheaper infrastructure and renewables, doesn’t it make sense for our archaic mining industry to invest in innovation? To consider developing infrastructure and technology that can be adapted, scaled up or down to suit market conditions? And what can we do with what’s left over when the miners move on? Is there opportunity to ‘re-purpose' our redundant mining infrastructure (think the world’s largest underground trampoline set up in a disused Welsh mine!)?

image via Daily Mail Australia

Perhaps, instead of asking Government for the answers, it should be incumbent on the mining industry (which, let’s be fair, are the primary beneficiary of profit, despite Michael Roche’s assertions that the industry is doing Queensland a favour), to provide some forward-thinking solutions that benefit the people of Queensland in the long term, not just the CEOs and shareholders in the short.

Take yourself back all of 5 years ago, to the year 2010 and have a look around. Specifically, take a look at the Australian construction industry. If you were to name the top 10 construction companies operating across the country, you’d be hard pressed to find anything but Australian local companies. Within the major infrastructure development market, the biggest players included Leighton, Thiess, John Holland, Abigroup, Baulderstone (should I succumb to the very Australian tradition of claiming successful New Zealanders such as Downer, Fulton Hogan and McConnell Dowell?!). It’s a traditional, conventional market, with traditional and conventional thinking and very little motivation to change or give up any market share. It’s a market that has relied on and developed a culture predicated on predictability, tradition and conventionalism.

My point is, where was all the international competition?

Australia has always been a land of big things – opportunities, ideas and projects. We’ve got the Big Pineapple, the Big Banana, the Big Prawn… We have iconic, internationally recognised engineering feats, like the Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, The Gorgon LNG plant, The Kalgoorlie Super Pit… Whatever the reason, we’ve never been shy of challenging ourselves. I guess when you’re surrounded by the world’s most poisonous and venomous plants and wildlife, we need to reassure ourselves that we’ll still be here tomorrow by building big and memorable monuments that will survive our temporary lives…

So it was only a matter of time until big (construction) business sat up and took notice.

Not just in the fleeting, momentary raising of the eyebrow sense, but in the sense that Australia had a monopolised major contracting market, a stagnant contract procurement model that discouraged innovation and competition and a government that rode out the GFC and had money to burn on new infrastructure.

Fast forward to 2016 and what do we see? The greater Sydney area has over $40 billion in major development underway. Tunnels, highways, light rail, a second airport, major residential and commercial development… Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane (including the Gold Coast and Darling Downs regions), are all currently investing billions in transport infrastructure. Regionally, we’re spending $5 billion on the Pacific Highway, $1 billion on the Bruce Highway and another lazy $5 billion developing northern Australia. This doesn’t even touch on the ongoing investment in resources (oil, gas, minerals) infrastructure. In layman’s terms, we’re spending a buttload on infrastructure right now.

So who wouldn’t want a piece of that action?

Our top 10 infrastructure contractors now looks radically different to our 2010 list. Leighton and Thiess have mutated into the Spanish owned CPB and CIMIC. John Holland are Chinese owned. Abigroup and Baulderstone were rolled into their international parent company, Lendlease. And we have a plethora of new, international faces rounding out the list – Acciona, Ferrovial and OHL from Spain, Bouygues from France, Ghella and Salini from Italy, Samsung C&T from Korea…

Certainly there are still plenty of successful Australian contractors still toiling away, but no one really at the level of these international construction giants. It seems for now that Australian companies have been relegated to the ‘Tier 2’ bench while the qualifying benchmark for ‘Tier 1’ categorisation has certainly been raised.

This eventually brings me back around to my point. What was the point of encouraging international competition for major infrastructure development?

Financial investment initially. Technical innovation subsequently. Value for money ultimately.

On the back of the GFC, we needed to maintain our well performing economy. What drives our economy? Employed citizens that spend their hard earned cash on houses, V8 utes, unnecessary consumer items, bad habits and groceries. As we’ve noted, we have a nation of builders – miners, engineers, blue collar heavy lifters – pumping out one oversized novelty icon after the next. But how did we intend on keeping all these people in gainful employment without spending all our taxpayer dollars on building these things ourselves?

So we invited greater international investment in infrastructure development and opened up foreign investment in Australian assets. And the world started to see Australia as a good investment. But you want a decent return on your investment right? So how do you increase your margin? How does the government reduce their invested amount? Let’s call that, “technical innovation”.

We’ve aggressively pursued international interest in developing major infrastructure to shake up our traditional, conventional and safe engineering industry to bring in international innovation with new construction technology, broader engineering experience and more competitive and collaborative procurement models. But don’t be misled into thinking this was a charitable and forward thinking move on our Government’s behalf; this is entirely borne of financial self interest.

And it comes with great risk. We’ve invited rapid integration of international contracting attitudes and cultures with our admittedly old fashioned contracting way of life. While we’ve spent many, many years developing a risk averse culture of safety, commercial conservatism and collaborative relationships, our international counterparts see this as economically pointless. Why do we inflate our contracts with onerous safety, environmental and quality constraints? Why do we need 5 people to do the same job as 2 overworked, underpaid (but grateful to be employed), engineers back in Spain? And why the hell is concrete $180 per cubic metre when it’s only $85 back home?

It’s this clash of culture that’s rubbing a lot of people up the wrong way. It’s a teeth cutting exercise where mid sized Australian contractors who are determined to compete for major infrastructure projects look to partner with anyone with the technical and financial capacity and desire to break into the market and then spend months or years waiting to have the divorce documents drawn up. We’ve grown used to a certain way of life, and while we hoped for the best, our new international sweethearts aren’t necessarily willing to commit on the same level. It’s a clash of expectations.

It’s truly amazing (at least to me), that these world renowned international giants have established themselves with such lean, in-country teams. It’s an extreme way to minimise the risk in their investment in our construction industry. We’ve been involved in a number of major bid teams with international partners where the international contribution has amounted to 2 or 3 management personnel of a team of 50 to 60, flying in from Madrid to provide critique and opinion at technical and commercial reviews. RedAnt Group have been engaged by international contractors to be their part of ‘chipping in’ to the project partnership. There’s no equity in this arrangement, so who’s really winning in the long run? What benefit are we deriving as an industry in the long run?

For Australian Tier 2 contractors, there’s an opportunity to expose their workforce and management teams to bigger, more technically and commercially complex engineering projects. There’s an opportunity to maintain turnover in a marketplace increasingly inclined towards bundling smaller projects into mega projects.

For many of our home grown contractors though, it has meant ‘adapt or die’. Increased competition has driven down profitability and ensured our top performing contractors (previously comfortable with the safe, predictable industry), became largely unprofitable and are having to adapt, merge or sell off to survive.

For government, there’s value for money. Maybe not in the true sense of improved quality of work and better performing infrastructure with lower lifespan costs, but in the decrease in financial investment required thanks to international concessions, divested infrastructure ownership and rock bottom market prices.

Over time, we may see a decline in those lost in translation moments and an increase to margins and market rates as our international compatriots seek to start clawing back profit from underperforming projects suffering from the effects of these unexpected cultural clashes. But that all depends on whether we as a nation can sustain the interest of the contracting world with a steady and tempting pipeline of work.

Since RedAnt Group first opened the door to the home office back in 2012, I've been on a mission to avoid working.

Let me re-phrase that: to avoid doing unnecessary work.

Technology being what it is today - a constantly evolving landscape of cloud based computing and app driven processes - there are myriad tools available to assist our day to day work life. Whether you're chasing optimum productivity, enhanced team collaboration and communication, file storage and security or just trying to claw back a few minutes of down time... there's a tool or an app for you.

As a lean, adaptable professional services company in the engineering and construction industry, we've tried and tested a number of tools to get stuff done over the years. And here's what we've discovered works for us (for now!):

1. Harvestand Harvest Forecast

Harvestis a simple, very friendly time tracking app, with web browser and mobile interfaces.

effort. You can even create and track invoices. Best of all, Harvest integrates with a number of other great apps and Google Business apps to streamline a number of day to day processes. We rely on Harvestfor tracking our billable hours for Client invoicing and keeping track of our performance against internal budgets.

The team at Harvestalso provide a fantastic 'sister' app, by the name of Harvest Forecast. This is a very clever, very easy to use gantt chart team/project planning tool. It syncs your projects and team from your Harvest account and allows for quick, visual planning of team resources.

RedAnt use Harvest Forecastto avoid over-committing to projects (and finding opportunities to sneak off for holidays!).

2. Teamwork

We've sampled, tested and beat our heads bloodied with a range of web based project management and collaboration tools over the last few years (think Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Zoho, Solo), and Teamwork has come out on top. Sure, if you're a freelance creative type or sole operator, these others may work just fine. But for a busy, growing team of engineering professionals, there are a number of different features we find indispensable with Teamwork.

Task list templates - great for standardised, QA certifiable processesFile storage and version controlTask planning with gantt chartIntegration with Google apps and other services - again, to streamline processes and cut down on keystrokes

3. BaseCRM

Communication is key. Being a consultant is about developing trust between you and your Clients. It's about developing and maintaining relationships. And the simplest, most comprehensive (and cheapest!) tool that we've tested over the last three years for helping us keep on top of our project opportunities and communications with Clients is BaseCRM.

If Salesforce is too dauntingly massive (too expensive and with more functionality than you'll ever need), and Insightly or Zoho are too simplistic, BaseCRM could be perfect for you and your team. BaseCRM offers a free trial for you to test it out commitment free and monthly subscription plans for their web/mobile platforms are extremely reasonable when you consider your return on investment.

Oh, and of course, BaseCRM integrates with a host of other services, again streamlining all your back of house processes!

4. Xero

And finally, what's the point of making it easier to find, win and deliver new work if you can't keep track of the money?

Xero is the hero. I always thought accounting and bookkeeping was for humourless, frowning accounting types (apologies to our wonderful accountant!), and while I'm still not convinced this isn't the case, Xero has gone a long way to helping change my perceptions.

As a small business owner, it's generally up to me to be everything to everyone, and bookkeeper is just one of my many personalities.

Xero is the most accessible, understandable online accounting software around. It's received rave reviews (in accounting terms, this equates to a single raised eyebrow), around the world and has changed the way many businesses manage their accounts.

We switched to Xero after spending many hours a week producing manually created invoices, compiling huge, error riddled spreadsheet ledgers and trying to reconcile bank statements manually. We also trialled MYOB and Intuit's Reckon (formally Quickbooks), and hands down, Xero is the hero.

Xero integrates with Google Business Apps, Harvest and BaseCRM has an optional payroll module, talks in real time with your financial institution and even allows you to invite your financial advisors to access securely online. If you haven't settled on an accounting package yet, don't even bother comparing. Get Xero.

So what are the key take aways from our last few years of trial and error?

Keep your costs down - go for Software As A Subscription (SAAS) services which are web based and allow you to work from anywhere (reduce your overhead!).Integrate and streamline - choose services that seamlessly share information with your other services and reduce lengthy processes to save you time. Also look for services that make it easy to import and export data, just in case you want to move everything to a new platform.Scalability - pick services that suit you now, but have flexibility to scale up or down depending on your business needs.

If you need any advice in finding a web service to suit your particular needs, or some help in setting yourself up with a service to save you time and money, why not get in touch? We're always happy to chat!

2015. What a year. A year of planning, building, challenges, solutions and successes. Definitely a year to look back on with pride in our accomplishments.

The RedAnt team has grown in number and reputation, providing critical support to some pretty awesome bids and projects across Australia. We've even taken our first steps to becoming an international consultancy with gaining prequalification with the New Zealand Government. A bloody lot has happend in the last 12 months, and we'd like to pay homage to some of our proudest moments.

RedAnt's Anthony Simpson and Rishi Subedi were proud to be a part of Lendlease's successful bid team for the $600m Kingsford Smith Drive Upgrade in Brisbane. The project, which involves an upgrade of this major road linking the Brisbane CBD to the Airport, Port, Cruise Terminal and TradeCoast area to 6 lanes.

The Lendlease bid team produced some truely innovative design elements that RedAnt successfully translated to a winning bid, including a partially suspended pavement over the river and urban landscape design features that present an opportunity to increase and enhance interation with the Brisbane River, providing a 'gateway to Brisbane'.

RedAnt's David Piper and Rish Subedi supported the WBHO/McIlwain JV with their low conforming bid for the Tourle Street Bridge duplication in Newcastle. While award of a successful contractor is yet to be announced, the team are confident their competitive pricing, team capabilities and technical alteratives proposed can get them across the line.

The Tourle Street project include

Duplicating 3.8 kilometres of the road between Industrial Drive, Mayfield West and Egret Street, Kooragang to provide two lanes in each directionA new two lane bridge on the western side of the existing bridge2.5 metre shoulders along Cormorant Road to cater for on-road cyclists

The South Australian government has committed to upgrading over 200km of unsealed roads servicing the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, in the state's remote north.

The bulk of the programme of works involves regrading, capping and sealing the main access road between the Stuart Highway and Pukatja, and upgrading 20km of access roads to the Pukatja (Ernabella), Umuwa, Kaltjiti (Fregon), Mimili and Iwantja (Indulkana) communities.

The RedAnt team are proud to have been extremely busy visiting the region and tendering several of these packages of works for different Clients in 2015. It's an environment and reality most never get the chance to experience, but it's incredibly humbling and puts one's day to day 'problems' into perspective.

Never again will I take my morning coffee for granted!

Yes, 2015 was a big year, but it's just the start as far as we're concerned.

So thanks 2015, and thanks to all that made it great for us. We're looking forward to 2016, to new projects, new challenges and seeing friends old and new!

So the client has requested you nominate your proposed project team for a critical bid. And despite already being noted on three other tenders in the last fortnight, as well as managing an ongoing project, your best Project Manager's name makes the org chart once again. Nominating your A Team again to impress the judges! Fingers crossed, that's when you win the job you can either find another Bob Smith, or maybe the client won't be too disappointed when you substitute in John Citizen...But wouldn't you be slightly miffed if a contractor started making excuses on day one? Would you feel like the relationship was getting off to a rocky start?

This isn't a new trend. As contractors, we've all been guilty of a little staffing sleight of hand. But the process can do a lot more harm than good. I bring up this topic based on a number of alarming observations recently while browsing through LinkedIn and other industry and recruitment forums. While we generally try to avoid interaction with the majority of recruiters and head hunters, there are a few we include in our circles as acquaintances and friends. At RedAnt we've noticed in the past few months a number of recruitment posts and job ads seeking to fill critical project roles for projects recently won, with shovels ready to be sunk.

And my question is; how are contractors winning work without the available capacity to deliver it?

Is this smart, responsible or sustainable?

There may obviously be a few things at play here which I'd like to dig a little deeper into. But first, I think it's important not to understate the Client's expectations in this situation.

Take off your hardhat for a moment and put yourself in the client's position. Any time you're bidding for work, this should be the first thing you do anyway. What is the client trying to achieve with the project? Based on all the available information (tender documents, project briefings, conversations with the client etc), what is the client telling you, explicity or implicitly, is important to them? Are there weighted selection criteria that will apply when assessing your bid?

Now imagine you've walked into a car dealership to buy a new work ute. The salesperson tells you, "no problems, we'll have a fully spec'd, top of the range 4wd in your driveway in three days".

How are you going to feel when they call two days later apologising as they can now only offer you a Daihatsu Charade?

Are contractors being deliberately deceptive to win work, just hoping that everything will work out in the end? Well no, not exactly.

Based on our experience, the simplest explanation isn't necessarily the best explanation in this instance. There are a number of factors at play that are contributing to this effect:

In extremely active and buoyant markets, Clients are releasing significant volumes of work to tender concurrently. This is particularly evident with RMS in New South Wales at the moment, and previously with disaster recovery works in Queensland. Not only does this place a strain on the workforce, but it also disincentivises innovation and competition.Contractors are making the most of the good times, but ignoring the important principles of long term business sustainability. With so many opportunities in some regions, many Contractors are targeting unsustainable growth and profits, without a parachute plan for when markets return to normal conditions. Sadly, despite the well publicised collapse of a number of respected resources dependent companies recently, there are still a number of contractors reluctant to plan, diversify and grow responsibly.The industry is still suffering from a skills shortage and hasn't taken serious steps towards retention, training and development of staff into key roles. This is a whole other post that I won't get jnto here...Expectations and standards of project delivery and metrics for determining project success have increased over time. Consider the changes over the years in the minimum safety standards we apply on our projects, and the changing expectations of our Clients and workforce as an example. While this has been an overwhelmingly positive change, it has come at a cost and requires a significantly greater effort to implement. This is now the same for commercial management (nastier, riskier contracts), environmental management (when was the last greenfields project you worked on?), and engineering input (with projects being rushed to market at all stages of design development).

So this leaves us with the question, "what can we do if this isn't the right way?" For some, the answer will be, "not a lot".

For those willing to put in the effort, it requires a whole of business approach to planning resource utilisation. It means having a project development process that identifies project opportunities well in advance, integrating with project delivery and aligning with your overall business goals. It's not impossible, but it's bloody hard work.'

Maybe the answer is entirely out of the Contractors hands, with responsibility for smart workforce engagement resting with Clients. Maybe Clients should understand the implication of their procurement processes and the impact their purchasing patterns have on their local (and not so local) markets. Unfortunately, when government is involved, these purchasing patterns are inextricably linked to budget funding, which as we all know sometimes is unduly influenced by what I like to call 'poplitics' (no, I'm not expecting that newspeak for popular politics to catch on!)...

But then again, maybe the simplest explanation IS the right one. Is this just another case of unscrupulous recruiters scraping together lists of candidates for roles that don't really exist? A glorified expression of interest of sorts? Whatever the reason, it's not something I expect to find a solution for anytime soon, and I sympathize with all our contractor friends (and those clients having to make their choices on project teams they've seen nominated on multiple bids!).

Everyone deserves to have an A Team!

Earlier this morning, the Queensland Transport & Main Roads invited industry to attend a briefing on the proposed up grade of Pacific Highway Exit 54 - the Coomera Town Centre Interchange.

By way of a brief intro to the project, this is a long overdue upgrade of a poorly performing interchange, currently operating at 2010-11 capacity standards. The proposed upgrade (already progressed to detailed design within the last five weeks), has been budgeted at $75M and includes a new, widened bridge over the M1, two new signalised intersections, major ramp works and a new roundabout.

The project is due out to tender TODAY, with commencement expected on the 1st of July and completed by the end of September 2016 - a very busy, fifteen month programme.

"Hey, that's great news for contractors and the community!", I hear you say. Well, yes, of course anything is better than nothing at the moment for the Queensland construction industry, but the motivation and delivery of this project are likely to result in some very trying times for the successful bidder.

Of the total project budget (and TMR have stressed there are NO additional funds available, so think carefully about trying to take advantage of any opportunities during the tender stage!), a private developer has committed over 20% to the pot. Granted, most major developments require a contribution in the form of headworks charges to their local governing body, but this goes over and above what would usually be considered 'standard practice'. "But isn't it a good thing that private industry are investing in public infrastructure?" Yes, it is, but let's consider the trade off.

The private developer of the Coomera Town Centre, as many will know, is Westfield - a company it would be fair to say, that enjoys making a buck or two. For Westfield to commit to an additional $17M of funding to the upgrade of public infrastructure that for one reason or another has been overlooked by TMR, the Queensland Government and Gold Coast City Council for at least five years, one could assume there's enough of a financial incentive in the short to medium term in getting the Coomera Town Centre open and operational by say, Christmas 2016?!

TMR's planning effort has been heavily condensed to within the last two months, and as previously mentioned, has progressed from concept to detailed design in the last five weeks. In their own words, TMR engaged a designer who would 'work on their terms', and produce a design fit for tender to suit their end date of September 2016. TMR advised prospective bidders that no alternative design options would be entertained, as they're "pretty confident they have the right solution", and assessing alternatives will make the programme unachievable. In almost the same breath, TMR responded to questioners that "some analysis and modelling had been undertaken, but not 'detailed' modelling".

Some might argue that shortcuts have been taken, but this could be forgiven as by their own acknowledgement, TMR are currently under-resourced (and will be seeking to engage external project support and delivery consultants on this and other projects throughout the region).

While it's encouraging to see some new projects coming to market, the risk to so many desperate contractors is that Clients, under the influence of private investors, political commitments, general market constraints (and even the odd Commonwealth Games deadline!), are willing to enforce unrealistic expectations on an already damaged industry. For a contractor to successfully bid this project (we identified ten major contractors in the auditorium this morning!), will require a huge effort over the next six weeks, hounding subcontractors and suppliers for their best price, preparing traffic management and staging plans, pulling together estimates, submission documents and internal reviews... did I forget anything?

Oh yeah: if you want to win this one, you better just conveniently forget about your risk and contingency review - maybe just hide that page in the back of the folder...

Private investment in public infrastructure is a smart, and most would say a "fair" way to improve our transport assets, but should the private partners in a PPP be able to dictate terms, borne of self interest, to the detriment of the industry?

Good luck out there.