Project Gate Reviews
Independent assurance at six decision points, from inception to handover. You get a Gate Report within seven days of each review: Proceed, Proceed with Conditions or Do Not Proceed.
Two minutes will tell you where your capital governance is weakest.
Ten questions on how your Council approves and delivers capital projects. Your answers stay in your browser and nothing is sent.
How ready is your Council?
Ten questions about how your Council governs capital projects. You will get an indication of where you stand, gate by gate. It stores nothing and sends nothing.
A directional indicator only. The full diagnostic assesses 59 criteria against documented evidence.
Three ways councils use the CCF.
Framework Diagnostic
We assess the governance framework your Council runs every project through, not the projects themselves. You get a gate-by-gate gap analysis, a Capital Readiness Index baseline and a remediation plan you can budget for.
Implementation and Capability
Gate templates fitted to your delegations and standing orders, audit and risk committee reporting, workshops for your staff and facilitated Gate Reviews on live projects.
Built for WA local government.
Grounded in WA obligations
Every gate reflects a requirement your Council already holds under WA legislation and the Integrated Planning and Reporting framework. Nothing is bolted on.
Written from inside a council
Built by someone who held executive responsibility for capital works programs in WA and NSW local government, and who has been the officer who owns the outcome.
Built on established practice
Stage-gated assurance has governed major public infrastructure for decades, here and overseas. The CCF brings that method down to council scale.
Sized to the job
Five tiers. Which one applies depends on what a project is worth, what could go wrong and who it affects. A footpath renewal and an aquatic centre should never get the same treatment.
Sized to the projects your Council actually delivers.
Most WA councils are delivering capital projects between $2 million and $30 million. Big enough to reshape a long term financial plan, small enough to be approved without independent scrutiny. That is exactly the band where a formal assurance step is hardest to justify and most useful to have.
Where capital projects come unstuck, and the gate that catches it.
Six patterns from published findings of the Office of the Auditor General, the Corruption and Crime Commission and authorised inquiries, and from councils' own reports. No council is named. The pattern is the useful part, and in most of these the step that would have caught the problem did not exist to be followed.
Six patterns, and the gate that catches each one
-
A shire borrowed $22.5 million to build a 328-room workers village. The nearby nickel mines went into care and maintenance, and the village sold for less than it cost to build.
Office of the Auditor General WA and the shire's own business planCaught at G1 Business Case
-
A regional council paid $85.2 million to exit a twenty year waste processing agreement nine years early.
council meeting papers and annual reportCaught at G1 Business Case
-
A roof replacement approved at $2.5 million was revised to $7.5 million. The pool below it was out of action for more than two years.
council agendaCaught at G1 Business Case
-
Marine works were awarded to a contractor with no marine construction experience. The waterway was too shallow for boats for five years.
authorised inquiryCaught at G3 Procurement and Award
-
Two years of accounts could not be audited after a finance system migration. Commissioners were appointed.
Office of the Auditor General WACaught at G4 Construction and Delivery
-
$75.6 million of completed capital works was still recorded as work in progress, with assets available for use or in use and not being depreciated.
Office of the Auditor General WACaught at G5 Handover and Asset Registration
Classification of each case to a gate, and the view that the gate would have caught it, is Meridian Advisory's assessment, not a finding of the cited reports.
Each of these is documented, sourced and named in the evidence brief. Ask and we will send it.
The full WA evidence base, on request.
We keep a documented case library of WA council capital projects, each sourced to a published finding or a council's own reports, and mapped to the gate that applies. We share it with councils, audit and risk committees and sector bodies. We do not publish it.
Know where your Council stands before the next project commits.
Start with the two-minute check, or book twenty minutes and we will talk through where your Council is exposed.