The ARA represented rail infrastructure contractors at the Australian Constructors Association’s Foundations and Frontiers 2025 Leaders Exchange in Brisbane on Tuesday.
The Forum brought together leaders across the various sectors and stakeholders groups to engage in roundtables on the topics of:
- Reducing the indirect costs associated with infrastructure delivery
- Increased flexibility in the application of rostered days off
- Halving the cost of bidding for new projects
The ARA emphasised the opportunity for improving systems integration practices, shifting to more collaborative contract models, move to risk based and trust driven assurance models, streamlining review and commenting processes, and simplify reporting, to reduce indirect costs associated with infrastructure delivery.
The ARA also encouraged standardised requirements, the use of digital platforms and shared data standards and a more streamlined bidding process, including in relation to management plans during tenders to reduce bidding costs.
With concerning data that shows how costly procurement and project delivery is in Australia compared to the rest of the world, and the fact that productivity in the construction industry hasn’t improved in decades, the discussion led to a number of agreed priorities for the industry around improved harmonisation of standards, requirements and processes, improving the risk allocation in procurement, increased collaborative contracting and project delivery and building a culture of trust between stakeholders.