CONSULTANTS UNDER SCRUTINY
Excerpt from Age article 11/8/14
The $8 billion project, which links Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway with the Western Ring Road, is shaping up as the key political flash point in the lead-up to November’s hotly contested state election. Traffic forecasts for major road infrastructure have been put under increased scrutiny after a $46 million class action was launched in May against consultants Arup over allegedly misleading traffic forecasts for the company that managed Brisbane’s Airport Link toll roads, which went into receivership last year.
Sydney Morning Herald 12/8/14…..
……..In the case of the Lane Cove Tunnel, which opened in 2007 with about a third of the predicted traffic volumes, the Supreme Court heard one suggested answer was forecasters come up with traffic figures based on their business needs, not what happens on the road. Those figures are coming back to hurt the forecasters, two of the biggest names in the business, that are facing a $144 million lawsuit by aggrieved investors. AMP Capital Investors, the manager of two funds that lost when the tunnel went into receivership within three years of opening, is suing Parsons Brinckerhoff and Booz Allen Hamilton, both of which have since won numerous lucrative contracts from the state government .
3 Comments
Some of the traffic and parking reports, accompanying permit applications for major developments in Doncaster, are submitted with carefully phrased caveats about how the projections are based on the assumptions chosen and dodgy reports previously accepted by the Manningham Council.
A successful resident challenge would have to show the consultant submitted overoptimistic and false results and presented them knowing they were unrealistic. Or demonstrate gross incompetence in data collection, choice of assumptions or modelling, very difficult when Manningham Council, the author and also the determining authority of the development strategy, has already rubber stamped them.
The embarrassingly absent scrutiny of consultant’s reports is allowing some developers to circumvent council’s own regulations.
As a result you get these Vcat appeals where objectors uncover a number of blatant irregularities, omissions and contradictions but are ignored because they are not presented by an expert witness. Even if objectors could afford one it would be difficult to engage one because most of their work comes from developers and responsible authorities and, for very obvious reasons, might not want to be seen in the opposite camp. It seems like the old adage, “he who pays the piper calls the tune”, could never be more applicable.
Eleanor
Jackson Court on August 21, 2014 at 1:55 pm said:
http://www.manningham.vic.gov.au/file/841/download
http://www.manningham.vic.gov.au/file/846/download
The above links contain the audio of the council debate, regarding discussion on the height of the Mitchell Street proposal, where the councillor, in challenging a consultant’s report, asserts that “experts will write whatever you want them to write” This puts into question the integrity of the entire process if that is the case