NORTH QUEENSLAND
BEING SHOVEL-READY FOR GRANTS
Glenda Kirk Director Infrastructure Services Mareeba Shire Council
It’s the first day of a new road construction project. The crew is raring to go, grader and digger engines are purring, and the sun is shining but there’s one thing missing – the plans. A shiny white ute approaches from the east, weaves between the traffic cones, charges onto the work site and grinds to a halt beside the site supervisor. The ute window glides down and the engineer passes a set of plans to the supervisor. They’re still warm from the photocopier and the ink from her signature has barely dried. She drives away in a cloud of dust. Alright, I’ve never actually done this however I have been on the receiving end of it, literally, and while this scenario is a bit dramatic, I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves scrambling to have designs ready in time. Whether it be designs for our own day labour crews or for tendering in the open market, there’s no denying that rushing the design process can lead to community dissatisfaction, frustrated construction staff, quality issues, time delays and cost blowouts. While infrastructure is being hailed as the solution to
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Australia’s economic recovery through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are now being ‘called out’ by funding agencies, presumably after too many undercooked projects have failed, or worse, failed to even get off the ground. The most recent round of grants offered under the Australian Government’s Building Better Regions Fund came as a shock to many of us. The key eligibility criteria for infrastructure projects centred around projects being “investment ready”, meaning construction would need to be able to commence within 12 weeks of executing the funding agreement with applicants required to provide evidence of having final designs and costings prepared, regulatory approvals in place and co-contributions guaranteed. It’s likely we will see this type of requirement extend to other grant programs over the coming months and years. So how do we get ever ahead of the game? Smaller councils in particular, struggle with being able to afford
to develop designs for projects prior to being approved for funding. The community wants to see their money spent on the ground where they can see it, not on planning – which, ironically, is where we need it most. At the same time, we also struggle to design and construct projects within a single year as for many of us, the ideal construction weather occurs in the first six months of the financial year. While we are yet to have an abundance of ‘shovel ready’ plans in the draw, Mareeba Shire Council embarked on a mission in 2019 to be better prepared for delivery of capital works projects through implementation of a Forward Design Program. The Program was initially established by sacrificing around 10% of the capital works budget for upgrade of transport infrastructure and its purpose was to develop detailed designs for the following year’s transport program projects. The Forward Design Program is its own project within the capital works program,
ENGINEERING FOR PUBLIC WORKS | MARCH 2022
