Dr Kerry Schott’s recent independent review of Inland Rail is a welcome development.
The report card for ARTC and Inland Rail is not good with the project basically poorly managed by ARTC who by their own admission do not have a board with the necessary skills and experience to manage this large and important construction project.
The project costs have gone from an early estimate of $8.4 billion to a 2020 estimate of $20 billion to the latest estimate of $31.4 billion.
Dr Schott added that she does not have confidence in the $31.4 billion estimate.
Her report highlights serious issues in the management and delivery of Inland Rail and has made 19 recommendations.
All these recommendations have been agreed to by the federal government.
The Narrabri Inland Rail Concerned Residents Group looks forward to dealing with a new company and CEO with the right experience and skills to manage the Inland Rail project construction.
We hope this will ensure the right engineering solution is progressed at Narrabri and the waste of $250m plus in construction of the new 40 kilometres of rail line at Narrabri and the additional flooding of 16 dwellings on Wee Waa Road is stopped.
The current Inland Rail solution at Narrabri is a poor choice for Inland Rail and a very poor choice for Narrabri.
Jim Purcell
Registered professional engineer
Narrabri
