Graeme Hogarth, the Project General Manager, expressed his delight with the construction progress and the benefits being achieved by using an alliance delivery. “Alliance delivery has proven to be very suitable for this type of project,” said Hogarth. “It has promoted efficiency in all project areas and enabled a focus on project value from all quarters.”

Setting up the NQGP Alliance between Enertrade (the owner), GHD (the engineer) and Thiess Nacap (the constructor) was a strategic decision aimed at ensuring that the Project was focussed on ‘best value for Project’ outcomes. Enertrade favoured an alliance approach due to the need to address many challenging stakeholder and approval issues and to manage the associated risk and safety aspects of the project.

The pipeline, which will provide a strategic link between the north Bowen Basin and Townsville, is one element of a three part project that further commercialises the state’s coal seam gas reserves. The gas for the project is being produced from the CH4/BHP Billiton petroleum lease (PL191), within ATP364, through an innovative horizontal drilling program. The gas is supplied at low pressure to the NQGP Compressor Station facility constructed at Moranbah as part of the pipeline element of the project.

The gas will be shipped through 400 km of predominantly 300 mm high pressure gas transmission pipeline to the two delivery points at Yabulu and Stuart in the Townsville region. At Yabulu the third element of the project, which is being undertaken by Transfield, is the conversion of the existing 160 MW open cycle gas turbine kerosene fuelled power station to a 220 MW combined cycle gas turbine power station.

In any pipeline project, achieving timely approvals is a major front end challenge and NQGP was no exception. With 65 individual landowners, matters of National Environmental Significance (NES) and a commitment to have gas in Townsville by the 4th quarter 2004 a rigorous approvals approach was needed. “Appointing people who know their business and letting them get on with it was a key philosophy,” said Hogarth. “I saw my role as providing direction and ensuring the team had the required resources.” To this end an in-house team of experts (drawn from the NQGP Alliance partners) was created with access from the very start to both operations and construction personnel. This collaborative approach enabled the team to meet and in many cases exceed the challenges they faced.

Significant engineering breakthroughs were achieved as a result of the alliance process which brought operations and construction personnel into the value engineering, design development and review process. This interactive process gave all parties involved an opportunity to understand the issues from an alternative perspective. The term “because we always do it this way” was quickly ousted in the Alliance environment. Each part of the design was reviewed from a lifecycle cost, operability and constructability perspective. This approach in the early phase of the Project has been estimated to have added $5 million in value, mostly as cost savings.

Early inclusion of construction personnel also led to significant savings with reductions in the total number of personnel required, elimination of duplications, and full inspection of the route prior to development of the detailed construction program. Other advantages achieved with the NQGP Alliance were the completion of all construction approvals and detailed risk mitigation planning prior to construction mobilisation.

The Project has provided a wide range of employment opportunities to Australian based industries. More than 200 subcontract personnel were engaged by the NQGP Alliance during the construction phase utilising a number of different contractual relationships. These subcontracts varied greatly in both value and scope from owner operator supplied equipment to major service contractors involving over 20 personnel.

A rigorous selection process was adopted to select the subcontract candidate that could deliver the best value for money whilst maintaining the desired Project outcomes.

“One of the highest risk subcontract packages on the Project,” said Facilities Construction Manager Mike Zambelli, “was the Electrical & Instrumentation works and we decided to use a partnering approach to select the most appropriate subcontractor team to work with the NQGP Alliance on-site. Ability to work with the team, not just the cost of the work, was an important element in the selection process.” The E&I subcontractor selected formed part of the NQGP Alliance team, working in the same office on-site to ensure open and honest communication was maintained at all times and interface issues were dealt with on a “best for Project” basis.

With the project nearing completion the NQGP Alliance structure has been fundamental in developing and implementing contingency plans required to address the significant ‘11th hour’ issues experienced in respect of the Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) program. The NQGP Alliance was able to implement new techniques almost instantaneously without the traditional period to determine fault and who pays. Hogarth said, “at no time during this Project has there been any consideration of whose fault or cost, rather a case of what can be done to deliver the outcome.”

This view was endorsed by the construction partners. “The real benefits of the NQGP Alliance approach became apparent when problems arose. The no blame/best for Project culture allowed the very best people to collaborate, discuss options and arrive at a solution. The result was no fuss, robust discussions, common objectives and no claims,” said Mark Bumpstead (Managing Director, Nacap).