Australia's electricity system is undergoing a fundamental transition as ageing coal-fired power stations retire and new renewable generation is developed in different parts of the country. New transmission infrastructure is essential to connect these new sources of generation to where electricity is needed, while maintaining a reliable, secure and affordable power system.
For many years, Australia's transmission network has been relatively mature, with investment focused largely on maintaining and incrementally upgrading the existing network rather than delivering major new transmission corridors. The current pipeline represents a fundamental change in scale, with AEMO identifying around 5,000 km of new transmission required over the next decade. Delivering this pipeline requires more than simply increasing construction activity. The industry needs to rapidly rebuild and expand capability across planning, approvals, engineering, procurement, project development and construction, while developing people with experience in delivering large, complex transmission projects.
SmedTech has been engaged on a number of transmission projects to support the development of the Project Scope and Delivery Requirements (PSDR) documents for these major infrastructure procurements. This support role has varied from directly developing the PSDR's or undertaking independent reviews of other PSDR's through to undertaking collaborative reviews with the project team where we ran a series of workshops to identify and resolve or mitigate risks. In these roles, we always focus on the:
The outcomes of our involvement in the Transmission Line Project PSDRs is a more considered suite of technical documents that aligns with the contractual framework and that has identified those critical aspects which need to be resolved in the development phase.
SmedTech's assistance on these projects has helped to enable our clients to enhance the clarity and structure of the PSDRs to further mitigate its risk position during the procurement of the delivery partner.
