A water infrastructure project reaches construction funding

Three business cases in series, each gating the next, then a construction commitment. The framework is sequenced the way this site would design it. What goes wrong happens outside the framework, before it starts.

infrastructureOne regional dam, weir or pipeline seeking Commonwealth capital under the National Water Grid Fund skeleton compare across jurisdictions

This is a structural skeleton, not a measured process. The steps, the authorities and the sequence are researched from this jurisdiction's published requirements and are broadly right. The durations are a uniform template applied across all jurisdictions, so the differences between them on the comparison page are mostly an artefact of that template rather than evidence about Australia. Do not quote the day counts. Replacing them with sourced figures for even one jurisdiction would make this page genuinely useful.

1990 days elapsed
longest dependent chain

8 discrete steps
across 3 bodies

9% waiting on availability
scheduling or queue, not assessment

730 days saved by concurrency
vs. 2720 if run end-to-end

Where the time goes

Critical-path days only. Steps that run alongside others are real work but do not lengthen the process, so counting them here would overstate the prize.

assessment		1810d	Someone is genuinely evaluating the merits.
scheduling		180d	Waiting for a person or committee to become available.

180 of 1990 elapsed days are spent waiting for a person or a meeting rather than for a judgement to be formed. Removing that time changes no assessment standard and lowers no bar -- it is the cost of scheduling alone.

The process, step by step

Applies when: A state or proponent seeks Commonwealth contribution to a water infrastructure project.

#	Step	Who	Why it waits	Clock	Typical	Basis
1	Feasibility or research study assessment Funded under the Science Program at up to 50 per cent or more where there is demonstrated need.	National Water Grid Authority	assessment	—	365 estimate	—
2	Preliminary business case assessment Required before a detailed business case proposal can be made. after Feasibility or research study 1260d slack	National Water Grid Authority	assessment	—	365 published	—
3	Detailed business case assessment Required before a construction proposal can be made. This is the gate. after Preliminary business case 720d slack	National Water Grid Authority	assessment	—	540 published	—
4	Commonwealth construction funding commitment decision Up to 50 per cent of total capital costs. Committed through the Budget, on an annual cycle. after Detailed business case 540d slack	National Water Grid Authority	scheduling	—	180 estimate	—
5	State planning and environmental approval assessment State assessment of the dam, weir or pipeline and its inundation footprint. after Commonwealth construction funding commitment	—	assessment	—	540 estimate	—
6	EPBC assessment and approval assessment after Commonwealth construction funding commitment 175d slack	Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water	assessment	—	365 estimate	Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth)
7	Water entitlement secured for the project certification A dam is a container. The water that goes in it has to come from somewhere, and in most Australian systems it is already spoken for. after Commonwealth construction funding commitment 175d slack	State water authority and register	third party	—	365 reported	—
8	Construction may commence decision after State planning and environmental approval, EPBC assessment and approval, Water entitlement secured for the project	—	assessment	—	0 estimate	—

on the critical path scheduling/queue = delay not caused by the assessment itself

Machine-flagged questions

These are produced automatically from the dependency graph. They are questions for a practitioner, not findings. Each one needs a person who has run this process to say whether the constraint is real.

The same body asked more than once

national-water-grid (assessment) appears at Feasibility or research study, Preliminary business case, Detailed business case. Could these be a single sign-off?

Proposed changes

Storage is a container, and in a capped system the water in it already belongs to somebody threshold
Many Australian water systems were fully or over allocated by the 1980s. A new dam in a capped system buys reliability, not volume — a real benefit, and a much smaller one than a gigalitre figure implies.
61 projects, up to $10 billion, 23 published business cases digitise
The National Water Grid Investment Framework requires a detailed business case before a construction proposal. Dungowan Dam had $595 million committed over seven years and was cancelled because the business case did not support construction. The framework was never the problem.

Sources

National Water Grid Investment Framework: staged funding for feasibility/research studies, preliminary business case, detailed business case and construction, with up to 50 per cent Commonwealth contribution at each stage
A preliminary business case is required to support detailed business case proposals; a detailed business case is required to support construction proposals
The National Water Grid Fund portfolio of 61 large water projects has a total capital cost estimate of up to $10 billion, with only 23 having publicly available business cases
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth)
Murray-Darling Basin Plan 2012: Sustainable Diversion Limits, replacing the Murray-Darling Cap introduced in June 1995

Something wrong here?

This page is wrong in some way -- every page like it is. If you have run this process, the most useful thing you can do is tell us which step took longer than we say and why. Edit data/processes/au-water-infrastructure-funding.toml and open a pull request, or send us the correction.