Victorian Auditor-General's Report
10 October 2012 
Managing Major Projects 
Audit summary
Investing in and delivering infrastructure is a core function of government. Investments are made to achieve economic, social and environmental outcomes, including increased productivity, access to services and improved service delivery, and improvements to the natural environment.
Victoria’s level of infrastructure investment is significant. The Victorian Government estimates the total value of current projects at around $35.6 billion, with projected expenditure of around $7.6 billion in 2013–14 alone.
Major Projects Victoria’s (MPV) role is to provide ‘expert project delivery services to Victorian Government departments and other agencies engaged in the delivery of complex, technically challenging and unique projects of state significance’. Typically, it delivers projects on behalf of public sector entities that do not have the required in‑house project management capability or expertise. MPV is a business unit within the Department of Business and Innovation (DBI).
Conclusions
MPV is not able to demonstrate that it operates, and manages infrastructure projects effectively, efficiently or economically. 
MPV operates under the Project Development and Construction Management Act 1994, which provides it with considerable scope to perform its functions. The powers that the legislation provides MPV require an effective system of checks and balances to make it accountable to the government, Parliament and the community. Adequate checks and balances do not exist, particularly in the way that MPV manages its internal contracts. 
Poor oversight by DBI and the lack of effective internal controls have contributed to poor governance standards and a lack of organisational integrity and accountability—contrary to the behaviours expected in the Public Administration Act 2004. DBI responses to Parliamentary committees have provided impressions of MPV’s performance that cast doubt on the veracity of information it has provided. There are continuing weaknesses in managing probity, and it is likely that MPV is not achieving the best use of public resources. By not collecting and reporting reliable data related to its performance, MPV has also failed to meet public sector accountability standards.
MPV’s governance and operational shortcomings are pervasive and should be addressed as a priority.
MPV has reported to Parliament that it has achieved 100 per cent performance over a 14-year period. This raises questions about whether Parliament and the community have been reliably informed, and highlights fundamental shortcomings of MPV’s and DBI’s governance.
MPV is not complying with relevant legislation. In addition to shortcomings in the way that DBI administers elements of the Public Administration Act 2004, its record management practices do not meet with the requirements of the Public Records Act 1973. Delegations DBI has made under the Project Development and Construction Management Act 1994 have elements that may conflict with the Standing Directions made under the Financial Management Act 1994. 
There are also major deficiencies with the way MPV manages internal contracts, with missing contracts, and variations without adequate reason or assessment of performance. This maladministration around contracts not only diminishes transparency and accountability, but increases the risk of error and fraud. 
MPV adopts employment practices that do not represent value-for-money and lack transparency and integrity. These practices have included employees resigning and being re-engaged soon after to perform the same work at a much higher cost to the public. 
While MPV has established a generally sound project management framework, there remain gaps that have not been addressed for four years. Ineffective oversight and quality assurance processes mean that the framework and better practice are not routinely applied, resulting in poor project planning that could ultimately lead to poor project outcomes and increased costs. 
MPV sees itself as a leader in project management across the Victorian public sector. However, it does not have any process to systematically and routinely learn from projects and, therefore, continually improve. Its inability to routinely learn from the projects it undertakes and change practices consequently limits its ability to lead other public sector infrastructure deliverers and set standards for project delivery and management.
Its poor oversight mechanisms mean that it cannot demonstrate a sound understanding of how it is performing across all of its projects. While MPV has performance indicators in place, it does not use them, and it does not have sufficient information to determine how well it is performing. 
Findings
Role and governance
Role and function
MPV is generally undertaking its legislated functions, which include facilitating and managing public construction for departments and public bodies, providing consultancies, information and advice to departments and public bodies, and providing advice and information to the Minister for Major Projects. However, it is not performing its roles in the manner the government intended. Rather than routinely delivering ‘major projects’, MPV manages the delivery of a relatively small number of high-value capital projects and a larger number of smaller planning-related projects. 
While MPV sees itself as a leader in project management and delivery, it is not performing a leadership role, nor is it performing a research role. MPV’s role extends to other areas that have little apparent ongoing connection to its core role or functions, such as owning and maintaining physical assets, managing leases for three restaurants and sitting as a board member for the company managing the Regent Theatre lease.
Reviews of MPV’s role and functions, such as the October 2007 Cabinet review of major projects in Victoria have resulted in no change, and the issues identified then remain unresolved.
Project human resources
Since its establishment in 1987, MPV has relied on a mix of employees and contractors to perform its functions. However, there are fundamental weaknesses with its contract management, and it is uncertain whether MPV’s staff are, in fact, contractors or employees in both the legal and practical sense. The status of MPV’s staff has significant financial and legal implications for DBI.
There is no documentation within MPV that demonstrates an assessment of the need for any of its contractors, or the existing capability and capacity within the public sector. MPV was able to provide only limited information around its recruitment of contractors. However, in most situations it is evident that MPV considered only the use of contractors. There is strong evidence to contradict DBI’s statements to Parliament about the availability of public sector employees, which implied that it had assessed there were none available. This raises broader questions about the veracity of the information provided by DBI to Parliament. 
Of the current staff that MPV considers to be independent contractors, this audit identified four who were working for MPV as public sector employees before they were appointed as contractors. This process of resigning from MPV and being re-engaged within a very short period to perform the same work at a much higher pay rate lacks integrity and transparency, and does not demonstrate value-for-money. Depending on the information the employees had, this process may have provided them with an unfair advantage during tender processes, and at a minimum is a declarable potential or perceived conflict of interest. None of the four contractors or selection panels declared a conflict of interest.
The way that MPV manages its staff raises significant uncertainty about their employment status. While determining the employment status of a contractor requires a case-by-case assessment, based on the evidence of this audit, MPV’s contractors satisfy a number of the criteria that would suggest they are in fact employees at law. 
If this is correct, then DBI may be financially liable to past and present contractors for unpaid leave entitlements and for other costs associated with hiring an employee, such as fringe benefits tax, Workcover, training and pay-roll tax. Given the value and length of some contracts, this liability could be significant.
Contract management
Effectively managing contracts is a fundamental good governance issue. It provides appropriate checks and balances so there is assurance that the contractor is providing the required services at the required standard, and that there is efficient and economical use of public funds.
MPV’s management of its internal contracts is significantly deficient. There are multiple weaknesses with most contracts that have occurred through MPV’s maladministration, which as a consequence is likely to have increased the risk of error and fraud.
Complying with legislation
While MPV does not have its own legislation, in performing its functions it is required to adhere to a range of other legislation. These include the Project Development and Construction Management Act 1994, the Financial Management Act 1994 and the Public Records Act 1973.
MPV is complying with the key provisions of the Project Development and Construction Management Act 1994, particularly in terms of nominating projects and establishing delegations in a manner consistent with the legislation. However, it is uncertain whether MPV is complying with the Standing Directions relating to authorisation of payments made under the Financial Management Act 1994. Within MPV, all the director positions are held by contractors and four of MPV’s seven project director roles are held by contractors. They have all been delegated the power to authorise payments. This conflicts with the Standing Directions, which prohibit contractors from authorising payments. DBI has not sought specific advice to be certain of its position. 
MPV also may not be complying with the Public Records Act 1973, given the deficiencies identified with the way it manages public records.
Project management and performance
Project management
Effective project management requires appropriate knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to successfully deliver a project. To enable consistency across projects—a goal of MPV—at a minimum the tools and techniques should be documented, and used in accordance with established processes. 
MPV has a generally sound project management framework in place, which adopts most of the principles of better practice project management. However, MPV is not consistently applying the framework, or better practice principles, across its projects. 
Project oversight
MPV does not have effective project oversight mechanisms in place that enable it to quality assure project management practices and learn from projects, and it does not have a sound understanding of the status of its projects at an organisational level.
Despite the project management framework being in place for four years, there is no system or process to update it. MPV does not have systems and processes to routinely capture and assess information from industry and compare it against the project management framework, or assess the currency of the information in it. MPV has not updated the project management framework more generally and it still contains incomplete information, including elements of three sections and four appendices that have not been started.
MPV recognises the importance of continuous improvement in its annual business plans, identifying ‘capturing the learnings from successes and failures’ as one of its key leadership behaviours. Despite this, it does not have adequate systems or processes in place to routinely learn from all projects and continuously improve. 
MPV has a range of reporting mechanisms in place to provide DBI’s and its own management with information about the status of its projects. These mechanisms focus primarily on individual projects or broader organisational issues. There is no management information that collates information on all projects and other MPV activities to give management a sense of MPV’s overall performance. Information obtained through meetings about overall project performance is not documented and resides with individuals. This is a gap in MPV’s and DBI’s governance. 
Project performance
MPV publicly reports that in delivering projects, it achieves 100 per cent performance. However, it is not clear what elements of projects MPV assesses to determine this level of performance. Given the gaps in its management information, we obtained data from MPV to enable us to assess the actual performance of its projects.
It is recognised that MPV is not responsible for all changes to a project that may impact on costs and time. Factors outside of MPV’s control, such as client entities changing the project’s scope, latent conditions and weather can affect project cost and timeliness. However, this should not prevent MPV from maintaining management information on the actual performance of projects and accounting for these factors in any reporting.
The data that MPV relies on to underpin its monitoring and reporting is unreliable, highlighting major deficiencies in its data management, record keeping and governance.
MPV’s data shows that for the main construction contracts—typically the largest part of a capital infrastructure project—most underperform against time and cost measures. The data shows that, on average, contracts exceed the expected cost by around 18 per cent and exceed the planned end date by around 37 per cent. This situation is not reflected in MPV’s reporting on its performance in Budget Paper 3 where it reports performance of 100 per cent against targets for its projects. 
Reporting performance
Monitoring and reporting performance
MPV has developed performance indicators as part of its external and internal accountability requirements. Both seek to assess performance against departmental objectives, however, there are significant inadequacies. Both indicators differ and neither is related to MPV’s objectives. They are neither relevant nor appropriate, and are therefore incapable of fairly representing actual performance. Regardless, MPV does not properly assess its performance against its indicators.
MPV cannot reasonably explain the key elements of its reported quality indicator and what it is intending to measure. Significantly, MPV’s ‘process’ to collate and analyse performance data to inform Budget Paper 3 is deficient and unauditable. 
While MPV has reported to Parliament each year that it achieves 100 per cent performance in the delivery of its projects, it could not adequately demonstrate that it actually collects and collates data, and nor could we identify sufficient and appropriate evidence that this occurs. 
This raises serious doubts about the veracity of the data reported in Budget Paper 3. It also raises doubts about the veracity of information that DBI has provided to Parliament, particularly through the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s outcomes and estimates inquiries.
Departmental heads are responsible for the general conduct, and the effective, efficient and economical management of their department. Understanding whether the department or its business units are operating to these standards requires a sound performance monitoring framework.
MPV and DBI have an internal quality measure to assess MPV’s performance, included in business and corporate plans: ‘achieve delivery of 80 per cent of infrastructure projects within +/– 10 per cent of agreed time, cost and scope’. Despite this indicator having been in place for nearly 10 years, MPV does not monitor its performance against it, and therefore does not know how it is performing at an organisational level. Neither MPV nor DBI collate, analyse or report data for its internal indicators at the business unit or corporate level.
Like its external measures, MPV has no processes in place to assess its performance. This is a further fundamental failing of MPV’s and DBI’s governance.
There are a range of deficiencies with the MPV and DBI internal quality indicator that make it inappropriate to assess MPV’s performance. MPV could not explain the indicator’s key elements and what it was intending to measure. This means that MPV cannot track the indicator over time—a key element of an appropriate indicator. It is similarly unclear what ‘time’, ‘cost’, and ‘agreed’ mean, and why these particular performance standards were selected.
A further issue with the indicator is that it has a performance standard of 80 per cent and, of that 80 per cent, within +/– 10 per cent. This indicator is very similar to the quality indicator in Budget Paper 3, which has a performance standard of 100 per cent. MPV’s internal indicator appears to accept a lower level of performance compared with the external measure. MPV was unable to explain the reasons for this.
Reviewing Major Projects Victoria’s performance indicators
MPV has been aware of weaknesses with its performance monitoring framework since 2009, yet little has occurred to address these weaknesses. In its 2009–10 business plan, MPV developed a business improvement project aimed at improving the consistency and delivery of MPV’s services. Specifically, the project intended to:
·	develop processes and methods to review all current MPV projects—by December 2009
·	determine key performance indicators for MPV projects—by February 2010
·	review functionality of processes, methods and key performance indicators—by April 2010.
This project was not progressed and MPV has taken no action to review its performance indicators. Given the weaknesses identified, not just with MPV’s indicators but also the absence of processes to assess its performance, this is a significant failing.
In March 2011, DBI reviewed its performance indicators. The context for the review was the planned introduction of the Public Finance and Accountability Bill in 2010. The review focused on DBI as a whole, although it addressed to a limited extent MPV’s performance indicators.
The review considered that the only indicator MPV could be held accountable for was time and cost. It suggested the indicator ‘MPV projects delivered within (%) of agreed time, cost and scope’, on the basis that it was attributable and specific; accountable and meaningful; measurable and robust; and available and manageable. This is the same as the existing indicator.
However, the review’s assessment of MPV’s performance indicators is deficient because it recommends maintaining the current indicator without understanding how or if MPV and DBI use it, among other weaknesses. It is unclear what action MPV has taken in response to the review’s findings related to MPV. Despite regarding itself as a leader in major projects across Victoria, MPV has limited knowledge of how other entities assess their performance. MPV recently reviewed the Victorian Budget Papers to determine how other departments report on their capital projects. This was undertaken in response to this audit. MPV has no knowledge of how other similar Australian or international entities assess their performance.
Recommendations
Number	Recommendation	Page	
	Major Projects Victoria should:		
1.	obtain legal advice as to the employment status of its contractors and the provision of financial authorisations to them	23	
2.	review the skills and capabilities required to carry out its functions and, if necessary, obtain advice from the Department of Premier and Cabinet about the ability for it to create additional public sector executive officer positions within Major Projects Victoria	23	
3.	review its contract management practices and implement practices that are consistent, at a minimum, with the processes and policies that the Victorian Government Purchasing Board has established	23	
4.	establish and implement a performance management framework for internal contractors so that payments and variations are linked to acceptable performance	23	
5.	undertake an independent fraud risk assessment, particularly around contract management and payment systems, given the weaknesses in controls	23	
6.	review its recruitment practices involving ex-employees so that, as a minimum, perceived and potential conflicts of interest are managed, and value-for-money obtained	23	
7.	establish a conflict of interest register and processes, in line with the Department of Business and Innovation’s conflict of interest policy, to enable it to identify and manage perceived, potential and actual conflicts of interest	24	
8.	review its records management processes and practices against the requirements of the Public Records Act 1973 and associated standards and policies, and implement changes as appropriate 	24	
9.	review the completeness of its key records, including contracts and project documentation	24	
10.	review its business planning to provide better clarity around its role, the actions it will implement to fulfil its role and the processes it will use to assess achievement of its role	24	
11.	The Department of Treasury and Finance should clarify the purpose of Standing Direction 2.4(i) and whether it applies in all situations, and take appropriate action to give the requirement the necessary legislative force	24	
	Major Projects should:		
12.	develop a process to routinely capture and assess industry and other information, and update its Project Management Framework as appropriate	42	
13.	develop robust oversight processes so that the Project Management Framework is appropriately applied and key stages approved and reviewed, and there is compliance with required project standards, policies and procedures	42	
14	establish a project review mechanism so that lessons from each project are identified, assessed, incorporated into practices as appropriate, and communicated	42	
15.	define and document governance arrangements for projects without external clients or end users so that there is an appropriate level of accountability, direction and oversight of project implementation	42	
16.	develop management information that provides a reliable, documented overview of project performance across all projects	42	
17.	define what an original approved budget is and consistently apply it to all projects	42	
18.	strengthen financial management system controls so that original budgets cannot be altered, and so there is a clear audit trail of changes	42	
19.	review and address data quality and reliability issues, including assessing how it defines key data, and how it collects, collates and manages the data.	42	
20	The Department of Business and Innovation should undertake a thorough and robust review of its external and internal indicators related to Major Projects Victoria with the aim of:
·	developing new Budget Paper 3 measures that better represent actual performance
·	developing new internal indicators that provide Major Projects Victoria and the Department of Business and Innovation with a robust and reliable assessment of Major Projects Victoria’s performance
·	developing, documenting and using robust systems and processes to assess performance using Major Projects Victoria’s external and internal indicators
·	re-allocating responsibility for assessing performance, given failings with the current functions and responsibilities
·	establishing quality assurance mechanisms to oversee the performance assessment process to provide assurance about the process.	52	
21	The Department of Business and Innovation should, in light of the weaknesses identified with its internal and external performance indicators, review the major projects indicator in its Corporate Plan 2009–12.	52	
22.	The Department of Business and Innovation should establish quality assurance mechanisms over Major Projects Victoria to provide it with appropriate assurance around Major Projects Victoria’s processes to assess performance.	52	
Submissions and comments received
In addition to progressive engagement during the course of the audit, in accordance with section 16(3) of the Audit Act 1994 a copy of this report or relevant extracts from the report was provided to the Department of Business and Innovation and the Department of Treasury and Finance with a request for submissions or comments.
Agency views have been considered in reaching our audit conclusions and are represented to the extent relevant and warranted in preparing this report. Their full section 16(3) submissions and comments however, are included in Appendix E.