University Assignment: Decision Making for Mega Projects Quiz 1

This assignment solution addresses a quiz on decision-making for mega projects. The first question analyzes the Hyperloop concept, outlining its potential and identifying three key challenges: the novelty of the idea, the high cost compared to alternatives, and its limited applicability. The second question examines a High-Speed Rail proposal, highlighting the role of the NSW Treasury and the stages involved in project development, emphasizing the importance of feasibility studies and data analysis. The third question focuses on risk management in the Sydney Light Rail Project, identifying security, contractual disputes, and resource management as crucial areas. The fourth question reviews the Inland Rail project's financial and economic viability, differentiating between the two and emphasizing their long-term implications. The final question proposes alternative strategies for a road construction project, including robust financial support, streamlining project delivery, and optimizing the use of existing road networks. The solution incorporates references to support the arguments presented.

Running head: DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
Decision Making for Mega Projects: Quiz 1
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

1DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
Answer to question 1
Hyperloop is referred to as a new structure of ground transport. These days many
companies are focused in developing these. With the help of this system operators would be able
to see those passengers who are travelling 700 miles per hours in the floating pod. The floating
pods are again races inside the giant low pressured tubes (Opgenoord & Caplan, 2018). The
tubes can be ether below the ground or above the ground.
The concept of Hyperloop is somewhere different from the other traditional rail. The
floating pods that carry the passengers are completely advanced in nature. Theses pods do travel
via tunnels or tubes which is generally left vacuum even free of air as well. Therefore, the
floating pods never face any kind of friction inside the tube while travelling and it also allows the
passengers to travel upto 750 miles/hour (Chin & Gray, 2015). The air pods are designed
considering the idea of air hockey tables or the magnetic levitation thus it can easily reduce the
rate of friction. Hyperloops are comparatively lower in price and the but faster than the train or
car speed. It emits no pollution alike the cars and trains while travelling in air. The technology
behind Hyperloop is still under continuous development and many companies are still working
on the concept so that they can turn this innovative idea towards a functional commercial system.
The Hyperloop concept is used for taking the pressure of gridlocked roads to make the travel
easier between the different city connecting highways.
Three biggest challenges associated to the Hyperloop concept include:
This idea is not a brand new one: The concept of first subway constructed in New York
was similar to the Hyperloop, which is comprises of empty power tube.

2DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
The mechanism is not cheaper than the other alternatives: The line cost proposed by
the Hyperloop concept is approximately $6 Billion which is not cheap at all.
Hyperloop is not beneficial for everyone: If the mechanism in major US cities then it
will be applicable for only the leisure travellers not for every middle class people.
Answer to question 2
It is role of the NSW treasury infrastructure and structured financing unit to develop PPP
guidelines and make sure that all the PPP projects are develop followed by the given guidelines
and requirements. It was expected that the project can be implemented in almost no cost.
Potential difficulties that are considered for the project include selection of improper tools and
techniques, lack of skills and knowledge about the concept and incorrect feasibility analysis
(Wiesel, Liu & Buckle, 2018). In order to approach this proposal the different stages that are
requested to be followed and maintained throughout the proposal developed life cycle include:
definition, planning, delivery and closure. Each one of these phases is needed to be maintained
followed by the project requirements and standard development guidelines.
Before initiating the proposal, the developer need to make sure that at first the project
requirements has to be clear to the supervisor and team members. The proposal must be
developed based on project scope document. After that, it is very essential to win the
commitment from project associates to make sure that they have understood the project
requirement (Branigan & Ramezani, 2018). A new solution cannot be proposed with expert helps
thus, expert team should be hired who will help to develop the proposal accurately. After that the
proposal should be planned. In order to develop the new proposal many supportive data are
required. In order to collect those essential data important sources are to be found by team. For

3DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
this project primry data source is much beneficial than the secondary data sources. Therefore,
essential data are to be collected from theses sources. From the data collected the new idea can
be formed. Data gathering and data analysis helps to identify accurate sources from which
needful data collection becomes easier. Lastly the most essential thing that a treasurer should
accomplish is conducting a feasibility study to ensure that whether the project will be a
beneficial one or not.
Answer to question 3
Security and risks are defined as those very most factors that caused major challenges
during the implementation of Sydney Light Rail Project, Australia. During the design and
construction of the Sydney Metro Greater West Project theses risks are to be considered and
must ensure that these issues will not rise during this project.
Three specific risk management initiatives that are essential for this project are: safety
and security of public, dispute among the involved parties in contract and proper resource
management plan (Love et al., 2017). In case of these public transportation project safety and
security of the public comes first. The design must be done in such a way so that it can give
complete security to the public while travelling. Before beginning the project contract policies
are to e signed by the involved parties with an approval from government. The contract must be
established followed by bidding and final negotiation. After that, resources are the other
important aspects for successful evaluation of any project. Human physical and financial
resources are the three categories involved in a project. For this project each of the three
categories should be properly maintained and managed as well before the final execution of the
project (Pfautsch & Howe, 2018). Based on the project development activities the resources are

4DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
to e assigned to each activity. Once the resources will be developed it become necessary to the
project development team to make sure that all the activities are accomplished followed by the
assigned resources without any sort of additional resource allocation. In order to protect the
travellers from any kind of unwanted attackers the project must be developed followed by cyber
security activities as well. Effective cyber security will ensure that even if such situation comes
then alarm will let the operators realize about the danger. The alarm will also help the operators
to take respective security action.
Answer to question 4
After reviewing the business case of Inland Rail it is identified that the business presents
a poor financial viability and a marginal economic viability as well. Economic viability s
referred to as a financial measurement approach related to cost and benefit. This approach
ensures the commercial success and failure of a project (Drechsler et al., 2019). If a project
successfully exceeds the investment done for the design and implementation of the project at the
early stage then that project is identified as an economically viable one. The economic viability
of a project is always measure and informed by the financial analyst assigned for a project. On
the other hand the concept of financial viability is somewhere different from the economic
viability. The financial viability of a project can be defined as the capability of a project to
produce enough or sufficient income for meeting the operating payments, allow growth during
maintaining the service levels, debt commitment wherever applicable. Financial viability is not a
long term play rater the economic viability is always a long term planning.
After analyzing the statement given by Toll Holding it identified that mega projects, giga
project and tera projects hold different characteristics and it is not possible that theses large

5DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
project will not give any such commercial benefit or Return on Investment in the upcoming
future. It may fail to give a commercial outcome or an economic structure but it will definitely
help to create a strong infrastructure (Kurtulus & Cetin, 2019). The new infrastructure can be
used further to create great business benefit and commercial future ling term profit as well.
Economic viability is referred to as a key parameter used by management to make sure that
whether to accept a project or reject a project. The newly developed project may not give
immediate commercial profit to the developers but in the coming 5 to 10 years it will definitely
give the expected outcomes.
Answer to question 5
Being part of a strategy team at Transport for NSW, it is determined that the proposal that
is going to be proposed is limited and unlikely much narrow. In order to reshape the proposal in
a better way three most essential alternatives that are proposed for the proposal are elaborated in
this section. While developing the final scope documentation the best will be selected and the
rest are rejected (Culnane, Rubinstein & Teague, 2017). The first alternative is alternative related
to robust financial support and funding. The second alternative is streamlining the project
delivery and the third important alternative is making most of the current existing road networks.
It may possible that the connection proposed is not making any such connection successfully in
that case alternatives can develop new structure and help to connect the roads as expected. The
other alternative that has been proposed as an alternative is robust financial support.
It is not mandatory that a project will always be completed within assigned budget and
time. There are huge possibilities that there will be a variance between the planned budget and
the actual budget. The actual budget can be either high or it can also be low. In order to avoid the

6DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
challenge of insufficient project budget the project finance manager need to consider additional
budget based on performance of the resources and its complexity. It will help the team to
complete the project within budget (Mulley et al., 2017). The third alternative that has to be
considered during the implementation of the road construction project proposal is to streamline
the project delivery. It will give the project team members a clear vision about the project
objectives and goals. The issues of time and cost efficiency will be completely resolved with the
implementation of project streamlining. It also gives a greater ability for identification of risks,
trouble shoot and financial risk mitigation.

7DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
References
Branigan, J., & Ramezani, F. (2018). Assessing the value of public infrastructure at a regional
level: Cost benefit analysis supplemented by economic impact analysis. Available at
SSRN 3263189.
Chin, J. C., & Gray, J. S. (2015). Open-source conceptual sizing models for the hyperloop
passenger pod. In 56th AIAA/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics, and
Materials Conference (p. 1587).
Culnane, C., Rubinstein, B. I., & Teague, V. (2017). Privacy assessment of de-identified opal
data: A report for transport for NSW. arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.08547.
Drechsler, M., Kelly, R., Newson, A., Sawtell, S., & Neville, T. (2019, April). Inland Rail–
Earthworks Value Engineering. In Australia New Zealand Conference on Geomechanics,
13th, 2019, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
Kurtulus, E., & Cetin, I. B. (2019). Assessing the Environmental Benefits of Dry Port Usage: A
Case of Inland Container Transport in Turkey. Sustainability, 11(23), 6793.
Love, P. E., Ahiaga-Dagbui, D., Welde, M., & Odeck, J. (2017). Light rail transit cost
performance: Opportunities for future-proofing. Transportation Research Part A: Policy
and Practice, 100, 27-39.
Mulley, C., Clifton, G. T., Balbontin, C., & Ma, L. (2017). Information for travelling: Awareness
and usage of the various sources of information available to public transport users in
NSW. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 101, 111-132.

8DECISION MAKING FOR MEGA PROJECTS
Opgenoord, M. M., & Caplan, P. C. (2018). Aerodynamic design of the Hyperloop
concept. AIAA Journal, 56(11), 4261-4270.
Pfautsch, S., & Howe, V. (2018). Green Track for Parramatta Light Rail: A Review.
Wiesel, I., Liu, F., & Buckle, C. (2018). Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of
government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney
(1988–2015). Geographical Research, 56(3), 285-297.