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The Australian Government is looking for proposals for its A$600 million (US$433 million) Northern Australia Roads Programme, committed through the White Paper on Developing Northern Australia.

The Australian Government aims to carry out  packages of safety and productivity improvements, such as widening, overtaking lanes and pavement upgrades or renewal, rather than major new standalone projects on a corridor. The packages would include a bundling a series of smaller projects together into a larger contract that crosses jurisdictional boundaries to find economies of scale or a delivery model through a strategic partnership approach between the government and the private sector.

To be more specific, the government is looking for innovation through potential opportunities for:

• Contracting private delivery and financing for design, build and operate for significant upgrades of major road corridors;
• Public-private partnership approaches to key major road upgrades;
• Innovative public funding support for key road upgrades through access to long-term public loans and/or project revenue payments;
• Service contracts for road upgrades and maintenance of all weather access on key routes for heavy vehicles; and
• Opportunities for innovative private economic developments which include road upgrades providing for improved public access through regions of Northern Australia.

The government, thought this programme, will provide a maximum of 80 percent of the total project investment.

Interested parties must submit their proposals on or before Frday, 29 January 2016, as the Government is seeking to announce selected roads projects under the programme in early 2016. The deadline could be extended if a strategic project would require more time.

According to the government, submissions received to date range in cost, size and complexity, from cost ranges of between A$2 million to A$30 million for smaller projects, and for larger projects or packages of works up to around A$700 million.

Additionally to this programme, the government is already investing over A$5 billion of its A$50 billion commitment in transport infrastructure in the north. These investments include over A$3 billion for the northern sections of the Bruce Highway, over A$200 million for the Cape York Region Package, A$172.2 million for the North West Coastal Highway and over A$650 million for road infrastructure in the Northern Territory.

See Request for Expression of Interest document:

http://investment.infrastructure.gov.au/publications/reports/pdf/Northern_Australia_Roads_Programme_Discussion_Paper_Dec_2015.pdf

We have recently reported on several road PPP projects globally:

• D4 - R7 expressways PPP project - Slovakia
• Melbourne Western Distributor PPP project - Australia
• Taizhou Bay Bridge PPP project - China
• Ruta R20 Nogales - Puchuncavi road PPP project - Chile
• Northampton bridges PPP project (Pennsylvania) - USA