Early brief: “Deliver a shiny new light rail through Sydney’s CBD. Easy. Everyone loves trams.”

Translation: scope unclear, assumptions heroic, risks buried under PowerPoint.

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They signed a PPP anyway.

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The CBD & South East Light Rail (CSELR) looked great on slides.

A 12-km network.

Wrapped in a neat PP.

Design, build, finance, operate, maintain.

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The promise: reliable transport, urban sparkle, political selfies.

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But, as usual, then construction met reality.

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The contract drawings and utilities data were “indicative,” the ground was… not.

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Every time someone dug, something unexpected showed up, i.e. old electricity pits, water lines, the archaeological record of a century of “we’ll map it later.”

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The D&C contractor said the client side misrepresented the complexity and sued for A$1.1bn.

That fight ended with the State paying A$576m and a revised PPP.

“Market testing” had quietly become contract re-writing.

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Meanwhile, the public got construction chaos, business disruption, and years of delay.

Enough to trigger a class action by affected.

Everybody forgets about collateral damages.

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Audit reports later called out inconsistent cost updates and poor transparency to the public.

Translation: the public paid first and learned the details later.

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And of course… “Delivered” ≠ “Delivered What Was Needed”

The line eventually opened and runs today.

But the original user promise morphed through variations, carve-outs, and re-baselines.

The classic PPP hangover: you get what’s written, not what people thought they asked for.

And once the asset is live? Every change is surgery.

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Unclear Scope at Tender = Expensive Clarity Later.

In PPPs, ambiguity doesn’t disappear; it migrates into claims, variations, and settlements, precisely, dear agencies, when your bargaining power is lowest.

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As-Built Reality Beats As-Bid Fiction.

Utilities, interfaces, access windows, heritage, traffic management… if they’re “TBD” at bid, they’ll be “$$$$” at operations.

Court filings and media records are a museum of “we didn’t know that.”

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Once Operational, Changes Scale 1:1.

Too expensive.

Need to tweak headways, stops, maintenance windows, systems?

In a long-term PPP, the meter is always running.

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So, if your scope is fuzzy at tender, don’t kid yourself with “we’ll sort it out in delivery.”

In PPPs, sorting it out in delivery translates to: lawyers, variations, and a politely worded press release about “re-baselined value.”

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Lock the need.

Prove the ground truth.

Price the uncertainty.

Or the public will buy a tram line and a lawsuit.

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