Copperstring 2.0

CopperString 2.0 involved building 840km of new electricity transmission line from south of Townsville in the Burdekin region to Mount Isa, connecting Queensland’s Northwest Minerals Province to the National Electricity Market. Approximately 200km of additional transmission line will be required to connect new renewable generators to CopperString. This project was created to deliver and operate new transmission infrastructure and energy hubs in this region.

TBH’s Role

During the ECI process with the Contractor (UGL), TBH provided advisory services and due diligence to the CopperString Special Purpose Company (SPC) in matters related to time, risk and commercial terms to inform their contractual negotiations with the Contractor during the ECI phase. TBH performed a detail review of the Contract and then facilitated a workshop with the SPC’s legal advisors to address the following issues:

• Ensuring the delivery risks for the design, procurement, construction, commissioning etc., were properly identified, assessed and managed.
• Ensuring various time and cost clauses were reasonable for negotiation with the EPC/D&C Contractor.
• Benchmarked the SPC’s requirements against similar projects.
• Identified any risk associated with the interface between various parties (e.g. energisation, commissioning and handover with PowerLink).
• Identified any conflicting risk profile between the Contract and the SPC’s project requirements.
• Drafted the programming, project control and progress reporting specifications for SPC’s.
• Advised on the potential considerations for incentivising the project deliverables.
• Facilitated workshops on the risks and challenges in transitioning the project ownership from the SPC to PowerLink.

The TBH Difference

Backed by our many years of experience in delivering transmission infrastructure projects, TBH was able to identify the commercial risks in the schedule, contract and SPC’s Requirements and discussed them with the project team. This assisted the SPC in considering these risks and requirements with their delivery partner in their contract negotiations and provided visibility over risk based commercial costs that shaped their investment decision.

To find out more about TBH’s Strategic Advisory Services Capability expertise, please visit the Strategic Advisory Services Capability page.