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Home Industry Infrastructure

A construction business’s culture must involve continuous risk management

Chris Sheedy by Chris Sheedy
26 June 2025
in Infrastructure, Features
5 min read
0
A construction business’s culture must involve continuous risk management

Image: Ross Coffey

When faced with increasingly complex infrastructure risk, Rene Burkart and his team look well beyond optimism bias to provide assurance around vital outcomes.

At its very core, said Infrastructure NSW Head of Investor Assurance Rene Burkart, his team works to enable exceptional decision-making.

These decisions are at all levels, from the state’s highest political offices to project teams. Such decisions help projects stay on track to be delivered on time and within budget. They have a deep focus on outcomes and are informed by a clear picture of how all stakeholders, now and into the future, will benefit.

The builds are sometimes worth billions of dollars – metro projects and hospitals, road programs and stadiums, art galleries and city precincts. They’re often projects so unique they require the oversight and guidance of the agency whose self-stated purpose is “creating a sustainable infrastructure legacy for NSW”. 

Since 2016, Infrastructure NSW has provided independent advice through more than 1000 assurance reviews.

Don’t plan to fail

When Burkart, a civil engineer, visits a site – particularly when his visit is unannounced – he can tell almost immediately how the project is tracking.

“If walkways are clearly marked, spotters are on the heavy equipment and everything is neat and tidy, that project is probably running on time and on budget,” he said.

It’s all deeply related to the Benjamin Franklin quote, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” Burkart explained. If a site is disorganised, it reveals deeper issues that present a serious assurance challenge.

“Often there are parallels to the project’s risk management culture,” he said. “Sometimes they will reach into the bottom drawer, pull out their risk register and brush the dust off the top.”

Walsh Bay, where Burkart assisted in the design of a new arts precinct. Image: Getty

The assurance process employs a risk-based approach to ensure that assurance evaluations focus on the large and most complex projects, applying varying levels of scrutiny based on a project’s risk profile.

“We ask questions like ‘Is this a cookie-cutter project? Or is it something the agency isn’t used to delivering? Is it expensive and complex? Does it have numerous interdependencies? What’s the procurement methodology? Is there time pressure to deliver the project quickly? What are the key risks from a government perspective?’” Burkart said.

Projects with higher risk profiles – right now there are more than 40 of them – are put through six-monthly health checks and require monthly reporting. These reports provide snapshots of key achievements, expectations for the next month, analyses forecasts and tracks contingency usage.

Read more: Rethinking risk in major construction projects

When they enter the process, the Infrastructure NSW team focuses on putting risk management at the centre of team culture. That begins with the removal of what Burkart calls “optimism bias”.

“We bring in independent, high-calibre experts who have no conflict and no previous work on the project, so they’re coming in totally fresh,” he said. “The project team then presents where they’re up to.

“The reviewers, usually three of them, spend a few days interviewing team members, clients and stakeholders to delve into the detail around where the project is really up to and to identify where the key risks and challenges are.”

“We can figure out what is going wrong, and what should be done to ensure it doesn’t become a bigger issue.”
Rene Burkart

For the projects with the biggest risk profile, the assurance process is typically run at six-monthly intervals and at specific stages of each project’s life cycle. The Infrastructure NSW team refer to these stages as the “six gates”. 

“We can see in plenty of time if a project is going off-track,” he said. “We can figure out what is going wrong, and what should be done to ensure it doesn’t become a bigger issue.”

How engineers can design civil infrastructure people actually love – and want to invest in

Confidentiality is key

Much of the information coming through this process is treated as highly confidential.

“Why is this assurance process so confidential? When the reviewers speak with the project team, they want openness, honesty and clear articulation of the issues,” Burkart said.

By maintaining confidentiality, stakeholders can share sensitive information without fear of external repercussions, facilitating more effective and timely interventions to address project risks and challenges. Issues identified are managed under a simple traffic light system. Green means things are going well. Yellow indicates some risks being managed by the team. Red means external assistance is required.

Image: Ross Coffey

Burkart also has experience on the other side of the fence, having most recently led the delivery of Sydney’s Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. The project encompassed theatres, restaurants, offices, bars, practice and performance spaces, and more, and was spread across and around a historic port district. A transformation was being delivered when COVID struck.

“The risk management process became something that was always evolving, something revisited weekly and that we held ourselves accountable for. In prioritising the risks on paper, we worked together to brainstorm how we were going to mitigate each one.

“We were proactive in driving change that needed to occur quickly for us to respond to a global issue. We created forums to make sure we tested ourselves on assumptions. Risk management was suddenly at the centre of our team culture.”

“Part of that culture must involve continuous risk management. You can’t do it once, then put it in a drawer.”
Rene Burkart

Interestingly, the process also led to a closer and more collaborative working relationship between construction company Richard Crookes Construction, Infrastructure NSW and other stakeholders such as the client and tenants.

“Two important messages come out of the Infrastructure NSW experience. First, the collaborative culture developed in the extended project team deserves a lot of time and planning up front. Spend time to get it right, to make sure trust is built and people can call each other out when the optimism bias is too strong.

“Second, part of that culture must involve continuous risk management. You can’t do it once, then put it in a drawer. As long as everyone is talking to each other and knowing where the risks are, suddenly you’ve got a different, powerful dynamic as a team set up for success.”

This article was originally published in the May 2025 issue of create with the headline “Risk, results, reality”.

Tags: risk managementdecision-makingproject planningAustralian infrastructureinfrastructure projects
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Chris Sheedy

Chris Sheedy

Chris Sheedy is a professional writer whose work has taken him to the UK, USA, Europe and China. He has a fascination with big things - ideas, organisations, infrastructure, achievements, brands - and the people and processes required to make them a reality.

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