A difficult issue can appear in several leadership meetings without becoming a decision anyone can act on. The reports are prepared, the discussion happens, and the delivery team still needs an answer.
Alliance governance should give that team a clear way forward. It establishes how participants exercise authority, make decisions and hold one another accountable. Alliance management carries those decisions into the day-to-day work of delivering the project.
Both depend on people understanding their responsibilities and being willing to exercise them, especially when the interests of the project and the pressures within participant organisations pull in different directions.
This guide focuses on infrastructure project alliances. The formal requirements come from the particular agreement, delegations and applicable obligations. The questions below concern how people make those arrangements work in practice.
Give governance a job beyond receiving reports
A governance forum needs to know what it is there to decide, what it needs to oversee and what belongs elsewhere. Without that clarity, a full agenda can conceal a shortage of decisions.
The Australian Government's Guide to Alliance Contracting describes a typical structure that includes an Alliance Leadership Team, an Alliance Manager, an Alliance Management Team and an Alliance Project Team. It distinguishes leadership-level responsibilities from day-to-day project delivery. Those names provide useful context; the roles and authorities on a particular project must be checked against its own arrangements.
The practical test is whether each forum helps the next level of the project do its work. A leadership meeting might need to resolve a choice the delivery team cannot make within its authority. A management meeting might need to coordinate how an agreed decision will be implemented. A progress report may be useful to both, but it does not perform either job by itself.
Before an item reaches the agenda, make the request clear. What decision, advice or oversight is needed? Who is responsible for bringing it forward? What does the receiving forum have the authority to do?
The record should then make the outcome usable: what was decided, who will act and how the people affected will hear about it.
Put authority where decisions are expected
People can be encouraged to take ownership while still being unclear about what they are authorised to decide. That gap leaves teams choosing between delay and the risk of acting beyond their remit.
Review the decisions that repeatedly stall. For each, establish:
- who has authority to make the decision;
- what information and input they need;
- which boundaries or conditions apply;
- where the matter goes if it cannot be resolved at that level.
Consider a proposed design change that affects cost and scope. The delivery team can develop options and explain the consequences. The approval route depends on the project's agreement and delegations. Clarity about that route helps the team prepare a decision for the people who can make it.
The national guide also describes decisions reserved to the owner within the alliance model it presents. It is a useful reminder to check where joint decision-making ends and another authority is required. A shared commitment to project success does not, by itself, settle that question.
Where a forum requires unanimous agreement, allow concerns to be stated and tested. Be clear about whether a decision has been reached or a matter remains unresolved. If agreement cannot be reached, the next step needs to follow the project's agreed process. The authority of a chair or facilitator also needs to be understood.
Decision pathways need attention as the project changes. A delegation that worked during mobilisation may need review as delivery accelerates or interfaces become more complex. Incoming leaders also need to understand the reasons for existing arrangements, including matters that are already resolved and commitments still being carried out. Any change to formal authority needs the appropriate approval.
Keep the client active in alliance management
The client helps create the conditions in which the alliance operates. Its contribution includes sharing context, making timely decisions and bringing the right people into discussions that extend beyond the delivery team's authority.
A client representative may understand the project's technical needs yet lack access to the people who can resolve a wider organisational constraint. The alliance needs to know how that connection will be made. Otherwise, an issue can circulate inside the project while the authority to address it sits elsewhere.
Client participation also affects the quality of challenge. When the client explains the purpose behind a requirement, participants can examine options against that purpose. When context is missing, the team has less basis for a useful conversation about trade-offs.
This capability needs to survive personnel changes. A new sponsor or governance representative should be brought up to date on current priorities, decision boundaries and unresolved tensions. They also need to understand how the partnership expects people to work together.
A deliberate approach to client-team development can make those expectations easier to maintain. Leadership continuity deserves the same attention as the continuity of technical and delivery knowledge.
Bring the charter into governance
A charter can describe the way participants intend to work together. Its value depends on whether those expectations influence decisions after the workshop has ended.
Start with the problem the charter is meant to address. If the concern is unclear accountability, examine where responsibilities are assigned and reviewed. If it is reluctance to raise difficult issues, look at what happens when someone brings an unwelcome message into a leadership meeting.
The connection should be visible in the project's routines. Agreed behaviours can inform terms of reference, onboarding and performance conversations, subject to the project's formal arrangements. Someone needs responsibility for checking whether those connections are being maintained.
A useful review can start with a recent difficult decision. Which agreed principle helped the team make it? Where did practice differ from the intention? What needs to change in the way the project works?
Review the charter's application when the team or delivery context changes. Respect any contractual status the document has when considering changes to its wording or requirements.
Our article on alliance culture lessons explores the wider cultural habits that can undermine collaborative delivery.
Make feedback lead to accountable action
Governance needs information about how the project is working, including the conditions that make delivery harder. A cost or programme report may not explain why decisions are slowing or why participants have stopped raising concerns.
Feedback from teams and stakeholders can help leaders investigate those issues. It needs to reach the people who can respond while the situation is still current. Confidentiality and the limits of the evidence also need to be understood.
A favourable survey score should not close down a discussion about a specific problem. Equally, one difficult comment needs context before it becomes the basis for a conclusion about the whole partnership.
The leadership team should work through what the findings mean and agree who will act. The Project Director has an important role, but other leaders own decisions and behaviours that the Project Director cannot change alone.
An action needs a named owner, an agreed response and a point at which progress will be reviewed. The next conversation should examine what has changed for the people affected. Completing an action on a register may be only part of the work.
If the same concern returns, investigate what prevented the previous response from taking effect. The constraint may be authority, capability, competing expectations or a relationship that needs attention. That finding should inform the next decision.
Recognise when governance needs a reset
Some governance problems become visible through recurring patterns:
- The same issue returns to successive meetings without a decision or an agreed next step.
- Routine delivery decisions are repeatedly referred to the most senior forum.
- Decisions are reopened because participant organisations were not properly engaged.
- Formal reports and the experience described by people doing the work tell different stories.
- Leadership changes leave the team uncertain about earlier decisions and commitments.
These are prompts for investigation. Each can have several causes, and adding another meeting may leave the cause untouched.
Start with a specific blocked matter and trace its path. Identify where it stopped and what was missing at that point. Confirm an unclear authority with the people responsible for it. Obtain missing evidence. Where tension between participants is preventing a useful discussion, a facilitated conversation may help them examine the issue and agree a way forward.
Any response needs to work with the project's formal escalation and dispute arrangements. Independent support should have a clear remit and understood boundaries. Changing the way a conversation is conducted does not grant new decision-making authority.
The test of a reset is whether the project can deal with the next difficult matter more clearly. Review that in use, alongside any changes to meeting structures or documents.
Get support with governance in use
ODAPTIC's collaboration services include governance coaching and leadership support, operating-model and governance design, and governance and role-clarity reviews.
The starting point is the difficulty your project needs to address. It might be a decision pathway that has stopped working, uncertainty between governance and management roles, or a partnership struggling to act on issues it already understands.
Our alliance coaching page explains the coaching role in supporting an alliance's leadership, relationships and performance. For the leadership perspective, read our article on great project leadership in an alliance or collaborative context.