top of page

Case Study Smart Assurance ™​

  • Company: Melbourne Tram Franchise (MR5)

  • Industry: Public Transport – Tram

  • Challenge: Bid, Transition, and Go-Live Phase

Tram on Bourke St Mall.jpg

Executive Summary
​

The Melbourne Tram Franchise (MR5) represents the largest urban tram networks in the world, serving millions of passengers across Melbourne. The iconic tram network spans 24 routes, with 250 kilometres of double track, around 500 trams, and over 1600 stops. The network services over 147 million passenger trips per year. As part of the bid and transition phase and Go Live phase, Dolanto supported the consortium, John Holland & Trasndev ( Yarra Journey Makers), demonstrating capability in Project and Infrastructure governance, assurance.

​

Smart Assurance™ has been utilised throughout the bid, transition, and go-live phases to strengthen contractual alignment to understand the differences between MR4 and MR5 contracts, operational readiness, and assurance visibility. The platform ingested 13,000+ documents and thousands of contractual and regulatory obligations, automatically mapping them to relevant system owners and surfacing accountability shifts across safety, asset, and operational domains. This allowed the team to deliver structured assurance across complex transition packages while achieving readiness targets under a compressed delivery schedule.

Challenges

Smart Assurance™ addressed critical transition and compliance risks, including:

​

  • Alignment Gaps: Need to harmonise new MR5 obligations with legacy frameworks from MR4 and understand the differences and similarities across system, process, roles & responsibilities,

  • Time Pressure: Highly compressed transition window to evidence readiness and compliance.

  • Complex Dependencies: Complex regulatory expectations.

  • Limited Transparency: Manual reviews are unable to keep up with thousands of evolving requirements.

Solution

Smart Assurance™ rapidly transformed unstructured bid and contract documentation into structured compliance and readiness frameworks:

​

  • Automated requirement comparison between MR4 and MR5 obligations.

  • Mapped thousands of obligations to system owners (legal, safety, asset, operations).

  • Surfaced role and accountability shifts using metadata alignment.

  • Delivered structured inputs for transition planning, gap closure, and assurance reporting.

  • Provided a smarter approach for transition and operational readiness

Results & Benefits​

Smart Assurance™ delivered measurable value across all phases of the MR5 program:

​

  • Obligation Visibility: Entire obligations structured and aligned to MR5 governance framework

  • Transition Planning: Readiness evidenced within accelerated timelines

  • Role Clarity: Automatic mapping of accountabilities to function leads

  • Assurance Reporting: Streamlined evidence base for audit, compliance, and readiness claims

Key Lesson Learned​

By embedding Smart Assurance™ into the MR5 bid and transition program, our Yarra Journey Makers achieved unprecedented clarity and accountability across a highly regulated transport environment. The assurance model enabled the consortium to evidence operational readiness, manage complex obligation shifts, and demonstrate compliance to the client setting a new benchmark for future public transport franchise transitions.

bottom of page