Abstract Body
This paper addresses key findings of the Productivity Commission report into Infrastructure investment 2014 and related reports that an estimated $30Bn pa of public money is wasted in the delivery of Infrastructure in Australia due primarily to failures of the Project Governance system used in delivery of project for outcomes. The Infrastructure Australia Plan (20160 also addresses the performance requirements of Governance and the need to refocus project deliverables on socially needed outcomes.
For emphasis of the problem facing Engineering leaders if a private sector client had a $30bn pa revenues shortfall due to poor investment decisions then a major investment would be immediately called up to fix the issue. For Public sector Engineering leaders, the question needs to be asked of Engineers how much investment in better governance is immediately needed to make the shortfall available for unfunded investments.
The paper outlines the reason for this shortfall and the ways that Assured Governance can avoid this annual loss in performance.
Systems for Public Sector Governance, how they work in practice and how they can be verified or audited under a Quality assurance framework or gateway review process are explained and proposals for improvement offered.
In addition, the erosion of value or wasted return on investment (ROI) and the transfer of benefits to the Project Delivery team of designers, contractors and suppliers is examined. System design and test and inspection plans (T&IP) for resilience audit are proposed and a Governance Maturity Model is provided to support intervention for poor Governance and to enable transformative Governance.
This paper draws upon the work of the author, Ted Tooher, Tom Crow, Shankar Sankaran in their paper “Enough is Enough and the plan for an upcoming Project Governance workshop series to enable Engineering leaders Executives to be delivered in 2022 and 2023.