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Australia 2011... A terrible mess
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Brisbane, Australia. 2011. A hot, humid year, and an even hotter PPP disaster: the Clem7 Tunnel. ​ Traffic numbers tanked. Revenue collapsed. The SPV went into voluntary administration. ​ And the government, tired, embarrassed, politically cornered… decided to move fast. Maybe too fast. ​ “Take control. Sort the mess. Do it now.” ​ And they did. At light speed. ​ They pushed what, in PPP terms, is basically the nuclear button: step-in, buy-out, asset recovery… messily… everything at once. OMG. ​ The problem? Or problems… I would say. ​ They rushed it so much that the day after the takeover… they realised they had no one left to ask basic questions. Yeap… You can’t come to a company macho style and remove the guys in charge… ​ Where’s the maintenance history? Which systems are under warranty? Who even holds the password to the SCADA system? What’s the ventilation protocol? Who’s the fire engineer of record? ​ Silence… the silence of the creeks. ​ Because everyone with the answers had already been dismissed, terminated, or left unpaid. Auch… ​ Imagine detonating a bomb… and then realising no one stayed behind to show you how to disarm the second one. ​ This is what people outside PPPs don’t get: ​ Step-in is not a heroic action. It’s a choreography. You need protocols. You need staged handover. You need negotiated access to the brains of the asset… not just the keys to the front door. ​ But Queensland moved fast. Too fast. The administrator pushed one way, the state pushed another, and the concessionaire had already disintegrated into lawyers, receivers, and smoke. ​ Result? ​ Post-takeover chaos. Months of trying to reverse-engineer the tunnel’s own documentation. Millions lost in duplicated inspections. Political blame ping-pong. And a very expensive lesson: ​ Even when you press the big red button, you still need a procedure to know how hard to press it. ​ Because disbanding at light speed looks bold in press releases… but on the ground? ​ It's just you, in a 6.8-kilometre tunnel, holding the detonator, hearing a ticking sound you can’t locate, and no one left to ask. ​ Don’t create such a mess… get some insights, below. ​Vicente Valencia Academy ​ ​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. ​ ​ |
Vicente Valencia
I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
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