Roads benchmarking 2022
Our 2022 road benchmarking spreadsheet has now been finalised. This is the fifth year in a row from 2018 when we first started to collect and publish information about NSW councils’ road unit rates.
The spreadsheet contains data about each NSW council’s road gross replacement cost per kilometer. This data is determined based on the information published by NSW councils, NSW Office of Local Government and Transport for NSW.
The main purpose of the spreadsheet is to give a simple tool for comparison of road unit rates between councils. This is a great benchmarking tool which can support councils in a yearly assessment of fair value of their road network, assist in internal desktop revaluation of roads or critically review valuations performed by external valuers.
The spreadsheet is available on this link ->> Roads benchmarking 2022
Some findings are summarised below.
Valuer
In 2022 financial year 12 councils performed comprehensive revaluation of road assets.
Half of those councils did this internally and half – by engaging external valuer.
Overall, since 2017 financial year external valuers and asset management consulting firms were represented by following companies: APV, AssetVal, JRA, Shepherd Asset Management Solutions, Infrastructure Management Group Pty Ltd, EMC-Works, G7 Asset Management, Infrastructure Management Group, Talis Consulting, Civil Engineering Consultants, Pavement Management Services.
Unit Rates
By aggregating all unit rates into groups ($’000/km), some interesting results can be derived.
Sealed roads
As at 30 June 2022, about 47 councils had the largest unit rates for sealed roads (>$400k per km) which is comparable to the results from 2021 financial year (46 councils). Summary of all councils presented in the graph below.
Unsealed roads
26 councils’ unsealed road rates are within $0k-$50k per one kilometer; 17 councils are in the next group of $50-$100k per one kilometer. The two groups combined comprise one third of all councils. 14 councils have unsealed unit rates above $150k per one kilometre. Unfortunately, we could not find out details for unsealed roads values of about 61 councils which are in a “N/A” group. More details available in a graph below.
Bulk earthworks
There is some uncertainty about 50 councils which did not disclose value of road earthworks in their financial statements or in Special Schedule 7 (because they were combined with the roads values). From the rest of the group significant portion (38 councils) used rates below $100k per kilometre. However, there is still a large amount of councils with the unit rate of more than $200k per kilometer (21 councils). See details in the graph below.
Contact us
Vanguard provides services for fair value assessment, desktop revaluation of roads as well as coordination of external revaluation of all classes of infrastructure assets. Contact us any time to discuss your needs. We are here to help!