The North East Link Project is for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of a tolled motorway linking the M3 Eastern Freeway with the M80 Ring Road; upgrades to the M3 Eastern Freeway with new lanes and new technology; and a new Doncaster Busway with dedicated express bus lanes along the Eastern Freeway from Doncaster towards the city.

The Cica Group is providing specialist expert tolling advisory and operations and maintenance consulting services to NELA concerning commercial and technical aspects of design and procurement for the Tolling System and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for the NEL, including:

• Providing expert advice concerning the States tolling strategy and proposed tolling scheme;
• Providing expert advice concerning the design of Tolling and ITS infrastructure;
• Providing expert advice concerning the structure for tolling and road operations and maintenance;
• Preparing Tolling System (Roadside System and Back Office) Performance Specifications for the Outline Scope Requirements (OSR);
• Providing peer review of all ITS, mechanical and electrical OSR requirements;
• Developing a whole of ITS concept of operations that integrates Managed Motorways and vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure concepts;
• Development of bottom-up cost models for development and Operations & Maintenance (O&M) for tolling and ITS;
• Review of Road Operations and Maintenance estimates including benchmarking Road Operations and Maintenance estimates done by others against actual costs for current operating toll roads or other toll road projects;
• Development of the KPI scheme across the whole OSR and concession deed.