A group of State Treasuries comprising Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia formed an Inter-Jurisdictional Steering Committee to initiate research into the rationale for the increased use of the alliance delivery method in Australia and whether VfM could be enhanced at any stage through the project lifecycle. Evans & Peck and The University of Melbourne were engaged to undertake a research Study to inform the committee.
In addition to the Treasuries, the Alliancing Association of Australasia supported the Study by commenting on the Study brief and providing access to projects carried out by its members.
Initially the more detailed Study brief was "undertake a detailed benchmarking study of alliancing across Australia to investigate whether alliancing delivers incremental value for money (VfM) to government against other procurement methods".
Specifically, the deliverables under the brief were as follows:
• Establish a detailed understanding of how procurement methodologies have generally evolved, and specifically the style of current alliance projects.
• Define VfM in capital and infrastructure projects from a government perspective.
• Establish a methodology for assessing the evidenced VfM proposition provided to government by alliancing (including Program alliancing) compared to other procurement methods (i.e. "incremental VfM") and also compared to perceived or reported project success.
• Quantify the incremental VfM outcomes that have been obtained from complete project alliances (i.e. benchmark a small number of projects).
• Identify lessons learnt from recent Australian project alliance outcomes and recommend policy positions and guidelines to optimise VfM.
The literature review stage uncovered gaps in the current body of research, which together with learnings from Phase 1, resulted in the Research Team expanding the Study question to: "How can VfM (value for money) be enhanced in the alliance delivery method?"