Recommendation
38. Achieve greater value for money from infrastructure investment by making incremental improvements to procurement policies and practices, including:
- further developing and implementing procurement models for major projects to encourage a culture of collaboration, achieve better risk allocation and address industry sustainability
- implementing contract packaging strategies that support market participation, including smaller packages, where appropriate, to provide opportunities for mid-tier and lower-tier contractors
- encouraging greater market response for major projects by developing a policy under which the WA Government would contribute to all or part of the bid costs of unsuccessful tenderers, under specific conditions including the transfer of intellectual property from bidder to government
- further reviewing and refining the Market-led Proposals Policy to ensure it is meeting its intended purpose and that proposals are considered promptly while balancing risk
- considering and implementing program procurement approaches, including panels of contractors, where appropriate, such as for the delivery of similar small-to-medium projects across one or more state agencies or government trading enterprises
- considering the use of offsite and modular construction techniques where benefits can be achieved
- establishing a cross-agency infrastructure procurement coordination mechanism for projects in the planning phase, or during business case development, to identify staging opportunities.
WA Government response
The WA Government responded to Foundation for a stronger tomorrow in February 2023. Recommendation 38 (a,b,d,e,f,g) is fully supported; (c) is not supported. For further information please refer to the response document.