Helping find efficiencies in the delivery of infrastructure maintenance services 

The City of Gold Coast’s Water and Waste directorate wished to enter into a collaborative long-term agreement under a single contract to maintain, renew and improve the performance of much of the Gold Coast’s water and sewer networks and other infrastructure. The ten-year program is intended to transform the way the City delivers its maintenance services and is expected to provide efficiency in delivery and additional benefits to Gold Coast businesses and the community. 

Marelius was engaged to assist with the development of procurement documentation and to help manage the procurement process from the Expression of Interest phase through an Early Tender Involvement (ETI) process and the Tender phase. The ETI Phase consisted of a series of interactive workshops with multiple tenderers where key issues and commercial considerations were workshopped.

Challenges & Opportunities

There were over 30 single maintenance contracts in use with a wide variety of Contractors engaged to deliver existing services and the new Contract required a single strategy. Information from all the existing maintenance contracts needed to be consolidated under one set of tender documents, with an overarching strategy and performance mechanisms.

The tendering process was undertaken amidst several Covid related lockdowns which made scheduling and facilitating workshops very challenging. In addition, the maintenance market had recently consolidated with some significant acquisitions, which had an effect on the tendering process.

The program itself presented a wonderful opportunity to help deliver efficiencies across the full life cycle, from procurement through to delivery and the ongoing maintenance of assets.

Our Solution

Extensive stakeholder engagement was successfully undertaken to develop tender documentation which not only incorporated the key facets of all the individual maintenance contracts, but also explained clearly to tenderers the purpose of the program, the scope of maintenance and renewal activities, risks, opportunities, and expectations.

Considerable effort was put into ensuring that the various workshops facilitated during the ETI Phase were engaging, effective and useful to both the client team and the tenderers. This was important to ensure that client needs and expectations could be clearly expressed, and that tenderers collected sufficient information to allow the best possible submissions.

Marelius successfully worked with the City through this extensive tendering period, assisted with Council approvals and worked with the City and the successful Tenderer for the 6-month Transition In period. The program is successfully up and running and transforming the way that maintenance is delivered within the City.