NSW Government maintains lists of pre-qualified consultants with PPP, commercial, financial, legal, accounting, and Probity expertise.
The Responsible Agency should use the Performance and Management Services Scheme (Scheme SCM0005)5, subject to EPP Direction obligations, to shortlist and engage service providers for Accounting services (Category 5A), Financial and economic advisory services (Category 5F), and/or Probity advisers (Category 6C).
The Responsible Agency should use the NSW Government Legal Services Panel (Scheme 2021/001)6 for legal advisory services.
Legal advisers are required to review tender documentation and to prepare contract documents, taking into account the NSW Treasury PPP tender templates and Template Project Documents for Availability PPPs.
In some cases, an appropriately skilled NSW Treasury representative may be the commercial/financial adviser (or lead the commercial/financial work stream with the support of external consultants) for the project.
The services of environmental and planning approval expert(s) and community consultation expert(s) should also be retained where appropriate. These services may be sourced externally or internally in some Responsible Agencies.
Prior to commencing procurement, the Responsible Agency must also engage geotechnical and other experts (for example to provide topographic surveys, hydrological, hydraulic and ground water investigations, contamination reports, utilities investigations and certain asset condition surveys (as applicable)) to carry out site investigations to inform early risk conversations with relevant market participants and develop Commercial Principles appropriate for the project7. To minimise bid costs, these experts should be engaged on the basis that their reports can be relied on by bidders and novated to the successful bidder.
Where practical, the proposed scope of work of the geotechnical and other experts should be shared with potential bidders or short-listed parties for input.
NSW Treasury should be consulted in relation to the terms of engagement of advisers, for example with respect to liability caps.
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5 See https://buy.nsw.gov.au/schemes/performance-and-management-services-scheme.
6 See https://buy.nsw.gov.au/schemes/nsw-government-legal-services-panel.
7 Responsible Agencies should also reference https://www.infrastructure.nsw.gov.au/media/3429/commercial-guidelines-for-infrastructure-projects-part-1.pdf for further detail.