Broken Hill Long Term Water Supply

Project Overview

The Broken Hill Long Term Water Supply Project involves the design and construction of a raw water pipeline from the Murray River at Wentworth to Broken Hill. This 270 km pipeline will connect to existing water supply infrastructure in Broken Hill. The development will have a capacity of 37.4 megalitres per day. The pipeline route will be mostly underground following Silver City Highway to the Mica Street Water Treatment Facility in Broken Hill.

In December 2016 the NSW Government announced their selection of WaterNSW to construct, operate and own the Broken Hill pipeline as a part of a $500 million investment package to augment Broken Hill’s water supply. In October 2017, the NSW Government announced that the project had been awarded to John Holland MPC Group Joint

Venture. The project involves significant environmental, planning, and community consultation aspects, a challenging construction environment in some remote areas, and a compressed timeline to secure a reliable water supply.

TBH’s Role

TBH was initially engaged by WaterNSW to develop an initial master programme for the project, coordinating design, authority approvals, construction and commissioning. TBH then monitored progress against the Master Programme during the design, approvals and tendering phases. As a member of the Technical Sub-panel for the tender, TBH completed a detailed comparative analysis of the tender programmes provided with a focus on the achievability and adherence to the RFT requirements. TBH developed summary time-chainage comparison of the critical trades with a focus on production rates. TBH undertook a comparative analysis of the draft Construction and Time related management plans submitted (e.g. Basis of Schedule, time Management and Construction Methodology) and provided a rank for each of the tender submissions with a focus on the Time/Programme against the RFT requirements and presented these to the Tender Panel. During the Construction phase, TBH has reviewed the programmes provided by the Contractor and updated the Master Programme to integrate the Contractor’s programme activities. On a weekly basis, TBH collects status data from across the project team and provides a project-wide weekly status update. Outputs include bespoke technical and executive-level reports which have been developed to meet WaterNSW’s specific needs.

These reports provide WaterNSW with both a record of project progress and an independently-validated current forecast of likely completion date.

To find out more about TBH’s Planning & Scheduling experience, please visit the Planning & Scheduling page.