Barwon Water, Victoria’s largest regional urban water corporation, required a comprehensive procurement and delivery strategy for the upgrade of the Wurdee Boluc Water Treatment Plant (WTP). The upgrade was essential to increase treatment capacity and improve system resilience to meet projected demand in the Greater Geelong region. It was Barwon Water’s largest infrastructure project to date.

Given the scale, complexity and long-term service requirements, the project was designated High Value High Risk (HVHR) under the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF) guidelines. This required a robust assessment of procurement models to ensure value for money, risk allocation and market engagement.

IAG was engaged to develop and support Barwon Water’s delivery strategy for the project. Acting as a trusted commercial and transaction advisor, IAG provided strategic insights and hands-on support across multiple workstreams to help set the project up for successful procurement and execution.

Key responsibilities included market scanning and benchmarking, stakeholder engagement and delivery strategy development, risk identification and mitigation planning procurement planning and coaching and ongoing commercial advisory services. We provided end-to-end support for the development of Barwon Water’s procurement and delivery strategy, including procurement options analysis, informal market sounding and industry engagement, funding and financing strategy, risk allocation framework and preliminary works package development