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Transport NSW's $3M ticket to TeamBinder

Transport NSW has purchased a AU$3 million document collaboration application, to host and share documents that will be used in the construction of planned rail projects worth AU$10 billion.
Written by Mahesh Sharma, Correspondent

In May this year, the NSW government purchased QA Software's TeamBinder application for AU$3 million, and which followed a two-year tendering process, according to QA Software CEO and co-founder Russell Mortimer.

The application was implemented in July, and is already being used to share documents in the early stages for the project to construct a new rail that services Sydney’s Northern Suburbs, including the AU$8.5 billion North West rail line.

"On these huge projects, there is a lot of drawings, hundreds of thousands of drawings that will be developed; sampling, soil testing, studies of traffic patterns, specifications, and so on," said Mr Mortimer, whose firm is based in Melbourne.

"That is one of the complexities, management of documents during this process."

The system will be used at every stage of construction; from research and design, tender and contracts being awarded, to detailed drawings for how the foundations are designed and produced.

The NSW government previously managed projects using proprietary systems, developed in-house, but third parties could not access this information, he said. The new system will allow all parties to work from a single set of documents, and be able to only access relevant documents.

The system will be soon used by Transport NSW for several other rail projects.

"I remember working as an engineer, decades ago, and when we sent out tender documents for a contract, we used to make about eight sets of photocopies to send out to the tenderers. Those photocopies could've been boxes and boxes of drawings," Mr Mortimer said. "Now, all that's no longer required. They're sent as a transmittal with links to all these drawings, which are on the internet, and they're given access."

"It is a very important cog in the wheel. The flow of information through the various parties is like the lifeblood of the whole project, because without documents and information, they can't build the projects."

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