Transcript
In relation to major projects, our experience has been that because of the size of a lot of these projects that there tends to be a lot of information, a lot of interest and our traditional approach or our client's traditional approach to dealing with that is to break them off into bite size chunks and to allocate that responsibility to various individual officers. That can sometimes lead to issues of things falling between the gaps, information not being communicated between various groups or various divisions within a particular agency that might be the case and so because of that there sometimes needs to be an overarching understanding of where things are at in terms of the program and the issues that are likely to be raised so that they can be addressed on a project-wide basis.
AcquiRE is a unique tool we have developed which can facilitate and simplify property acquisition. This interactive tool will provide real time information for properties affected by the project. AcquiRE will provide a centralised database of property information for the entire project with tools to facilitate each stage of the property acquisition process. This tool can generate due diligence reports either for the entire corridor or specific locations. It will also enable additional information to be entered against individual properties such as unregistered property interests. The tool can also be used to generate standard documentation such as proposed acquisition notices, compensation claim forms, acquisitions notices and standard template correspondence. All parties working on this project can have access to this tool as they need it. We can configure different privacy settings between the service providers and the packages.
Key features of the tool include an interactive map, by clicking on a property location it will show an aerial image of the property. In this instance we have used Google maps but we can configure the tool to use a preferred GIS mapping program. This dashboard can also be configured to provide for critical milestones and progress along the acquisition program. In this instance we have adopted the statutory timeframes and milestones of a standard compulsory land acquisition process as an example. All visualisations can be configured depending on the information that you need, for example, we can link information concerning each land interest, dates offers have been made, dates contracts were exchanged with links to specific documents. The tool also has an information database for each property. It can provide information for multiple interests in one property such as a strata scheme. This can store information such as title searches, leases, valuations, surveys, business records. There is no limit to the information that can be stored for any one property or land interest. Documents on the database also can be searched to locate key information in those documents using a specialised program called Heretik. For example if you want to know the amount of rent or the term of a lease or if it contains a demolition clause.
AcquiRE will be an important tool to facilitate efficient property due diligence, complete property acquisitions and ensure project timeframes are met.