Mecone with partners Infrastructure and Development Consulting (IDC) were engaged by the NSW DPIE to develop an infrastructure assessment framework for the Hunter and Central Coast Region that facilitates the identification and prioritisation of state and local infrastructure needs over the long term.
This Infrastructure Prioritisation Framework (IPF) was piloted in the Cessnock LGA to determine how enabling infrastructure could be identified and prioritised to deliver the most efficient, equitable and cost-effective infrastructure sequencing for government, developers, and the community.
The basis of the framework is infrastructure staging cost-effectiveness analysis, with additional evaluation criteria that consider wider environmental and socio-economic factors, as well as various funding sources. Once the staging of areas had been developed, various housing and population growth scenarios were developed and tested in the prioritisation tool, that allowed for the forecasting of infrastructure demand over time.