Blacktown Westinvest Projects

Blacktown Council commissioned a multi-disciplinary team to prepare business cases for Westinvest funding on more than 30 projects with a combined capital cost of $1.2b. The team was led by APP with HillPDA providing the economic assessment and cost benefit analysis.  A whole range of projects were assessed including new parks and significant upgrades of existing parks, a new library, a First Nations Cultural Centre, a new PCYC, a new aquatic centre and upgrades of existing aquatic centres, active transport (cycleways and walkways) routes, sports fields and stadiums and an Australian Catholic University Health and Ageing Centre.

Our value add

The program for delivery was very tight to meet due dates for submission.  HillPDA pulled together considerable resources to research the broader social impacts of open spaces, sporting fields, aquatic centres, cultural centres and the like and various methods of monetarising these impacts into a cost benefit model that could then be used and modified for other projects. Some of the externalities that were quantified included travel and vehicle cost savings, health benefits from active recreation and travel, amenity benefits measured by uplift in property values, use benefits (opportunity cost of leisure time), consumer and producer surplus, tourism benefits and wellbeing benefits.

Project outcome

In all but one project the benefit cost ratios were above 1 and ranged from 1:1 to 3:1. Total capital costs of all the projects bidding for funding exceeded $1.2 billion.

Services:

• Financial appraisal
• Economic appraisal (cost benefit analysis)
• Risk assessment
• Business cases.

Client: Blacktown City Council
Project year: 2022

For more information, contact Adrian Hack, Principal