Off the rails: The cost performance of infrastructure rail projects

Abstract

Governments in Australia place great emphasis on the development and expansion of their rail networks to improve productivity and service the increasing needs and demands from businesses and commuters. A case study approach is used to analyze the cost performance of 16 rail projects constructed by a contractor between 2011 and 2014, which ranged from AU$3.4 to AU$353 million. Findings indicate that scope changes during construction were the key contributors that lead to the amendment of each project's original contractual value. As a result, there is a need for public and private sector asset owners to establish a cost contingency using a probabilistic rather than a deterministic approach to accommodate the potential for scope changes during construction. To improve cost certainty during the construction of rail projects, it is suggested that use of collaborative forms of procurement juxtaposed with the use of Building Information Modelling and Systems Information Modelling are implemented. The utilization of such technological and process innovations can provide public and private sector asset owners charged with delivering and maintaining their rail networks with confidence projects can be delivered within budget and are resilient to unexpected events and adaptable to changing needs, uses or capacities.

Cost-Benefit Evaluation Tools on the Impacts of Transport Infrastructure Projects on Urban Form and Development

“…Source: Authors' own research. also found that the mean overrun of light rail transport projects is around 42% [103] while the mean value is more than 20% regarding rail projects in the US [104]. Based on this research, adjustments for capital cost bias should be added to the initial cost estimations in the countries where public transport projects (e.g., railbased transport) are being constructed.…”

Identification of Delay Causing Actor in the Indian Real Estate Project: an AHP-Based Approach

“…The construction industry is sceptical to innovation and is affected by negative attitudes and discontent (Wood, 2010;Caridi et al, 2014;Egan, 2014;Dang & Le-Hoai, 2016;Daniel et al, 2017;Nguyen & Watanabe, 2017) due to its hierarchical nature (Akintoye & Main, 2007;Babaeian Jelodar et al, 2016) that affects schedule/cost performance improvement in construction (Lam et al, 2004;Kale & Karaman, 2012;Love et al, 2017a). The primary constraint in the way of decentralization of markets and process in the construction industry is that it is a project-driven, sophisticated and conservative sector (Segerstedt & Olofsson, 2010;Fulford & Standing, 2014;Donato et al, 2015;Lessing & Brege, 2015).…”

The Cost Performance and Causes of Overruns in Infrastructure Development Projects in Asia

“…The definition of cost overrun provided by Flyvbjerg et al (2018) is following: "Cost overrun is the amount by which actual cost exceeds estimated cost, with cost measured in the local currency, constant prices and against a consistent baseline". The current literature indicates that cost overruns have occurred in a significant number of infrastructure projects, such as Norwegian roadway projects (Odeck, 2004), road projects in the USA (Ellis, Pyeon, Herbsman, Minchin, & Molenaar, 2007), transport projects in Slovenia (Makovšek, Tominc, & Logožar, 2012), highway projects in Australia (Terrill & Danks, 2016), railway projects in Australia (Love, Zhou, Edwards, Irani, & Sing, 2017), and others.…”