
In the current economic climate, lenders and investors have become less tolerant of project delays and cost overruns. Independent and objective scrutiny of project costs and progress can make a significant difference to outcomes.
It is no longer a luxury, rather a strategic imperative, to have independent advice when ensuring the successful outcome of a project and receiving the full value of dollars spent.
How BDO can help
BDO’s experts provide major infrastructure projects with independent assurance and specialist advisory services through the procurement, delivery, and operations phases. Our experienced team can help you with:
- Tender evaluation support
- Contract financial establishment audits
- Financial system and control process evaluation
- Contract and program management support
- Independent financial audits over project costs
- Progress claim assessment and reconciliation
- Performance audit over KRA / KPI incentives
- Probity advisory and assurance
- Contract financial close-out and acquittal
- Infrastructure and construction assurance
- Service Organisation Control Reporting (SOCS)
- Supplier Security and Privacy Assurance (SSPA).
BDO has delivered a significant number of independent financial audits on major infrastructure projects across Australia, including the Bruce Highway Upgrade, Airport Link Tunnel and Northern Busway, and Legacy Way Tunnel and Western Freeway Upgrade.
Our risk-based, enterprise-wide solutions deliver:
- An integrated solution that focuses on monetary findings but can also address other key aspects of contracts, including vendor relationship management, project management, cost control management, and various other aspects of the internal control environment
- A measurable Return on Investment based on monetary findings realised (e.g. erroneous billings around time, material, overhead allocations, and other non-applicable charges), erroneous overpayments (e.g. duplicate payments, potential collusion leading to overpayments, etc.), incorrect member payments, and renegotiated contracts not applied on invoices.
Infrastructure and construction assurance
Organisations are regularly taking on major projects engaging multiple contractors to deliver significant pieces of infrastructure. Protection against long delays, cost overruns, waste and irregularities on construction and infrastructure contracts is essential.
For an infrastructure delivery project to perform at optimum levels, it is of vital importance that an audit program is established to help address any potential areas of contractual conflict, and provide an independent acquittal of project costs.
An assurance framework should also be established to ensure that payments to project partners are made in accordance with the terms of the project agreement and that there are no discrepancies relating to ongoing project costs. We achieve this through independent financial audits on the full open book accounting principle.
BDO supports a range of clients undertaking major infrastructure projects and public-private partnerships with project advisory and contract assurance services. These services can include developing contract management frameworks and contract registers, to providing contracted services procurement, audit and performance advisory services.
Our team of specialist project and contract auditing professionals offer an end-to-end solution that can be tailored to focus on specific elements of the project lifecycle based on client priorities. It is our commitment to create value and differentiation by consistently delivering excellence in the areas that matter most to our clients.