Cardinia’s road to success

AN INNOVATIVE roadbuilding program has won Cardinia Shire Council a prestigious industry award.
The Connecting Cardinia project won the Local Government Professionals Award for Excellence in the community assets and infrastructure initiative.
The project, a first for local government, involved a longterm partnership with the private sector to seal more than 50 kilometres of gravel roads and maintain 80 kilometres of road network over the next 15 years.
The project, which was born out of the increasing pressure on unsealed roads in the shire, had been of great benefit to residents, mayor Kate Lempriere said.
“The council decided to make this investment because the unsealed road network in the shire has come under increasing traffic demand as traffic volumes have increased with the population growth,” she said.
“This has resulted in an unsealed road network that is carrying traffic beyond its design capacity and is costly to maintain.
“This has been a significant commitment from council and has dramatically improved the road network and brought a whole range of benefits to everyone who lives and works in Cardinia.”
The council’s general manager of assets and services, Michael Ellis, led the project.
He said he believed its success was a result of the development of an innovative performancebased contract between the council and the contractor, Works Infrastructure.
Mr Ellis said the contract enabled Works Infrastructure to increase its initial investment in capital works providing extremely highstandard road construction, resulting in reduced longterm maintenance costs.
Connecting Cardinia steering committee chairman Cr Doug Hamilton said the project had advanced the council’s road development program.
The significance of the project has been acknowledged by the industry sector and used as a case study by the State Government for innovative service delivery options.
Many municipalities, both from within Victoria and interstate and seeking new, innovative ways to implement similar longterm community infrastructure projects that encourage public private partnership arrangements, have visited Cardinia to check out its approach.