Tender Advertisement #1303617

Purpose:
The purpose of this project is to develop investment tools/guidelines that enable road managers (and other road funders) to consider and prioritise ‘life-line’ routes when making road investment decisions.
The 2016 Austroads Report defined a ‘life-line’ route as:
“roads that may not deliver highly positive outcomes in traditional upgrade project priority assessments based on AADT measures, but have high value to the communities and regions they support”.
This is part of a broader cross-government effort to identify and mitigate risks for freight supply chains, particularly in the wake of recent COVID-19 and weather-related disruption and upheaval.

Scope:
Taking into consideration the 2016 Austroads Report Identification of a Risk Indicator to Support 'Life Line' Freight Routes (AP-R525-16), the project will:
• assess whether the ‘Life Line Risk Indicator’ tool outlined in chapter 7 of the report remains fit for purpose in light of recent supply chain disruptions such as the Kaikoura earthquake (2016), bushfires (2019-20), floods (2021-22) and COVID 19 responses (2020-21)
• consider how the tool (or whatever replaces it) can mitigate the risk of pandemic, climate change and natural disasters from a road freight perspective
• consider the relationship of the tool (or whatever replaces it) to interconnected government initiatives/projects
• consider the most accessible format for the information, recognising that the ultimate audience is road managers
• taking all of the above into account, propose and justify a revised ‘Life Line Risk Indicator’ tool or a wholly new tool/guideline.
The consultant must maximise opportunities to leverage from/complement but not duplicate work undertaken by BITRE and CSIRO. (See project background for further information).
The potential for telematics data to inform this work will be considered.
Austroads will provide some assistance with consultation with member agencies, such as access to forums such as the Freight Task Force. Austroads will also provide some of the relevant documentary inputs, such as recent Austroads research reports.

Summary of Deliverables:
NEF6396 is expected to produce the following deliverables:
• Phase 1:
○ project plan
• Phase 2: Context: Stocktake, Challenges and Opportunities
○ Fitness for purpose review of the existing tool
○ Literature review
○ Consultation summary
• Phase 3: Improving the Guidance
○ finalised external report that sets out the current situation for members, and the opportunities for improved guidance, report to include:
- recommendations for parallel projects on access decision making, and urban freight planning
- reference to complementary government projects
- case studies and worked examples
- revised or replaced Risk Indicator Tool
- input to a board approval process
• Phase 4: Reporting the results
○ finalised research report that provides a brief summary of the recommendations and the basis for those recommendations, along with the revised Risk Indicator Tool
○ webinar
• Project management activities:
○ suitable project management and control documents
○ all research data to be supplied to Austroads
○ consultant required to provide a data management plan including descriptive metadata where the primary object is not available

Also included as part of this tender are the following documents:
• Instructions for Authors of Austroads Publications which sets out the writing and formatting standards for research, technical and internal reports.
• Master Services Agreement outlining our Terms and Conditions. Please note that our Terms and Conditions are not negotiable.

All submissions are to be submitted as a PDF at a maximum size of 10MB.

All submissions are to include a completed Tender Proposal Coversheet.

The naming convention for submissions is: [your Company name] – [Project No.] – [any internal reference numbers].