Formation of the Project Team should be on the basis that members can continue in their roles throughout the project planning and procurement phases (as far as practical) and have sufficient capacity to be able to undertake their role.
The Project Team members will generally include an appropriately qualified and experienced Project Director, NSW Treasury member(s) and Responsible Agency staff, as well as appropriately qualified and experienced financial, commercial, technical (including a planning approval expert), operational and legal experts. All advisers should have clear lines of accountability.
NSW Treasury should be involved in the selection of Project Director, commercial and financial adviser and legal adviser. Responsible Agencies should contact NSW Treasury for templates for inviting proposals from Advisers and evaluating submitted proposals.
NSW Treasury maintains pre-qualified lists of consultants with PPP, financial, legal, and accounting expertise. The Responsible Agency may also wish to consider using the NSW Finance and Services Procurement Professional Services Schemes to shortlist and engage legal advisers and/or probity advisers.
In some cases, an appropriately skilled NSW Treasury staff member may act as the commercial/financial adviser (or lead the commercial/financial work stream with the support of external consultants) for the project.
The Project Director should be appointed as soon as practical. For likely PPPs it may be beneficial to engage a Project Director during the business case stage.
The Project Director should be given the appropriate delegations to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in progressing work streams and meeting the project timetable.
Legal advisers are required to review tender documentation and to prepare contractual documents, taking into account the NSW Treasury PPP tender templates and template Project Documents for social PPP infrastructure.
The services of an Environmental and Planning Approval expert(s) and community consultation expert should also be retained. These services may be able to be sourced externally or internally in some Responsible Agencies.
Where possible, prior to or during procurement, the Responsible Agency should also engage geotechnical and other experts. To minimise bid costs, these experts should be engaged on the basis that at least any factual information contained in (but not necessarily inferences from) expert reports can be relied on by bidders and novated to the successful bidder. Where practical, the scope of work should be shared with potential bidders or short-listed parties so they can provide input.