Our report Governance of the City Rail Link project was presented to the House of Representatives today.

In our work, we often identify poor governance as the reason why major projects have problems. Therefore, we wanted to provide Parliament and the public with assurance that the governance arrangements for the City Rail Link project were effective and likely to support its successful completion. We also wanted to provide observations on how central and local government have worked together to deliver significant infrastructure projects.

Aspects of the City Rail Link project’s governance arrangements are working well, despite challenging circumstances. However, even with effective governance and best efforts of all parties to deliver the project as planned, it is likely that this project will exceed its current budget and take longer than originally planned to be completed. City Rail Link Limited has publicly advised that it has a pending claim for additional project costs related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The City Rail Link Limited Board is accountable for successfully completing the project. However, it does not have authority over all the work needed to achieve this, such as the wider network improvements that Auckland Transport and KiwiRail are responsible for. Although these dependencies appear to be managed well at an operational level, we think the boards of the three delivery partners could be working more closely together – particularly as the project approaches the testing and commissioning phase.

The Sponsors’ officials have carried out some of their responsibilities well. They recognised the need for specialist expertise on the project and contracted an external Assurance Manager for independent advice. However, from the documentation we reviewed, we could not conclude how well officials are responding to the Assurance Manager’s advice or whether all critical issues had been addressed.

Planning for benefits realisation needs to be prioritised. We observed that there was confusion about which agency is responsible for planning, managing, and reporting progress in achieving the benefits of the City Rail Link project in the context of the wider Auckland transport network. This is concerning for a project of this significance, but we understand this work is now under way.

We’ve made four recommendations that are intended to further strengthen the project’s governance arrangements. This will help ensure that the project is successfully completed in conjunction with the wider network improvements, enabling the City Rail Link to operate effectively from opening day and achieve its intended benefits over the long term. We understand that the Ministry of Transport, the Treasury, and the Council have largely accepted our recommendations and have already started implementing them.

A two-page summary and epub are also available for this report.

A media kit with hi-res figures from the report is also available.

Watch this video to learn more about the findings and recommendations in our report.

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