This Guide to Alliance Contracting ('the Guide') has been prepared to provide consistent and leading practice guidance on alliance contracting to public sector agencies that develop and own infrastructure projects ('Owners').
This Guide reflects insights from government1 and industry which have been gained from significant experience over recent years, including $30 billion worth of public sector alliances that have either been completed or are currently being planned or implemented across Australia. The Guide draws upon learning from the many projects, which are now complete, and were procured using alliance contracting, and upon the findings and recommendations set out in the report In Pursuit of Additional Value.2
| Benefits of alliancing Alliancing has evolved to become a broadly accepted procurement and delivery method, which has been used to successfully deliver many risky and complex projects. Under an alliance contract, the Owner and the Non Owner Participants (NOPs) work together to collaboratively determine the best project solution and deliver the project. |
The Guide has been prepared to:
provide the minimum conditions for Owners in order to comply with the National Alliance Contracting: Policy Principles ('Policy')3 when delivering alliance projects;
provide guidance to public officials undertaking the planning and delivery of alliance projects to enhance Value-for-Money (VfM) outcomes for governments; and
improve the quality, consistency and commercial outcomes of government alliance projects.
This Guide has been developed recognising that alliance contracting:
should comply with all relevant overarching jurisdictional policies and principles that generally regulate public sector procurement;
is a complex commercial transaction and, accordingly, Owners should apply good commercial practices to the selection, development, procurement and implementation of alliance contracts; and
is now a mature procurement and delivery method for Owners, and has become a 'business-as-usual' option for delivering infrastructure projects, i.e., alliancing is no longer a pioneering, unique or novel approach to project delivery.
The Guide does not address issues related to the jurisdictional processes that apply to an approval of a project, or the process for the Owner's assessment of alternative procurement strategy options as part of the Business Case. There are other (overarching and general) government policies and guidelines that cover these matters.
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1 Unless otherwise stated, the expression 'government' is used to denote all the government entities of Australia, which include the Commonwealth of Australia and all Australian state governments and territories.
2 Released by the Department of Treasury and Finance, Victoria, Australia in October 2009.
3 The National Alliance Contracting: Policy Principles, published by the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, April 2011.