The unique Quantm system was initially developed over a ten year period by the Australian Government’s Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) before being transferred to Quantm Ltd in 2000 for further development and global marketing.

Independently produced and endorsed case studies document the system’s ability to improve the planning process by simultaneously considering factors such as land-use constraints, land acquisition and access costs, construction costs, design geometry of the infrastructure and crossing existing linear features such as roads/rail/rivers. The result is improved community and stakeholder relations, shorter planning cycles and significantly reduced construction costs.

The Quantm system differs from GIS and CAD systems in that it has been specifically developed for the corridor and route selection phase. Project planners/engineers define the constraints, parameters and unit costs and the system will then automatically identify a range of low cost corridors or alignments that comply with the project requirements. The alignments can then be reviewed or presented as part of the route selection and consultation process, with the speed of the system enabling comprehensive sensitivity analysis that allows the project team to quickly respond to land-holder issues and maintain the momentum of the project.

While the pipeline version is still in the development phase, the comments from Quantm users on road and rail projects, who have saved as much as 20 per cent of the alignment construction cost, may give some insight to the value it will deliver to project teams in pipeline corridor and route selection.

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“Quantm has enabled us to cut as much as 12 months from our planning project.” – Arkansas Highways and Transportation Department.

“We reduced residential displacement in one corridor from 56 to 0, improved environmental outcomes and still cut up to $80m from the forecast construction cost” – Project Manager for California Toll Road.

“After subtracting coordination and public involvement time, selecting corridors and developing alignments is estimated to span over four calendar months, (using the conventional approach). With Quantm, the development of the results took only a few days.” – URS in report to Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

“We’ve taken 5 years to develop 35 alignments to design, and after using Quantm for a few months we won’t be using any of them.” – Consultant to US highway project.