A water infrastructure project touches civil works, tank supply, liner installation, pipework, electrical and commissioning — often five or six different specialisations. Procuring each separately can look like it saves money on paper. It is also exactly where delays and defects go unowned in practice.
The gaps between contracts
When civil works, tank supply and commissioning are contracted separately, the interfaces between them — who confirms the pad is ready before the tank arrives, who is responsible if commissioning reveals an installation defect — are exactly where disputes happen. Each contractor is legitimately focused on their own scope; nobody is contractually responsible for the gaps between scopes.
Program risk multiplies with each interface
Every handover between contractors is a point where delay can be introduced and blame can be diffused. A civil delay pushes tank delivery; a tank delivery delay pushes commissioning — and with separate contracts, each contractor can reasonably point to the contractor before them, leaving the asset owner absorbing the cumulative delay.
Project-managed delivery — where a single contractor holds accountability across civil, tank supply, liner and commissioning — does not eliminate the specialisations involved, but it eliminates the ambiguity at the interfaces. If commissioning reveals a defect, there is one party responsible for resolving it, not a debate about whose scope it falls under. If the program slips, there is one party accountable for recovery, not several pointing at each other.
Splitting a project into separate contracts distributes the work. It does not distribute the risk fairly — it concentrates the risk of interface failures onto the asset owner, who is the only party with visibility across every contract at once.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Who is responsible if a defect is found during commissioning? | With split contracts, this can become a dispute rather than a fix |
| Who absorbs delay caused by an earlier contractor's schedule slip? | Separate contracts often leave this risk with the asset owner |
| Who confirms readiness at each handover point? | Without a single accountable party, handover checks can be assumed rather than verified |
| Is there a single program the asset owner can hold anyone to? | Multiple contractor programs rarely align without active coordination |
Is project-managed delivery always more expensive than procuring trades separately?
Not necessarily, once the cost of interface delays, disputes and defect resolution under separate contracts is accounted for. The apparent savings of separate procurement often do not materialise once program risk and dispute resolution costs are factored in.
Does project-managed delivery mean one company does all the physical work?
Not necessarily — specialist trades are often still subcontracted for civil works, electrical or other specific scopes. What changes is that one party holds overall accountability and coordinates those trades, rather than the asset owner managing separate contracts and interfaces directly.
Is project-managed delivery only relevant for large or remote projects?
It is most valuable where multiple trades and interfaces are involved and where the asset owner does not have the internal capacity to actively manage those interfaces — which includes many remote and regional projects, but also complex metro projects with multiple specialist scopes.
Coordinating multiple contractors on a water infrastructure project, or want to avoid it altogether? A single accountable delivery model can remove that risk.
Discuss project-managed delivery