A report into a joint venture between an Australian state government and a US printing company blames rail authority chief exec for bridge monitoring fiasco.
The Victoria State Government Department of Transport entered into a joint venture with Xerox in 2021. The joint venture Eloque was intended to commercialise a fibre-optic technology called FiBridge to remotely monitor bridges. VicTrack, the state’s rail authority, had jointly developed the technology with US print giant Xerox. But there were technical issues and Eloque was wound up in August 2022.
The Victorian Auditor general investigated the decision-making by VicTrack and the department of transport. It found that VicTrack’s advice to the government was lacking in transparency, and over-optimistic.
