FIRST with NEIL MITCHELL

At least $16 million of Victorian taxpayer money has been poured into a failed venture which the state government was warned had serious issues.

In 2021, the Victorian government allocated $50 million for a joint venture between VicTrack and American giant Xerox, forming a new company — Eloque — to install new technology on bridges to monitor them for structural problems in real-time.

After 16 months, Eloque has folded, with the state government saying it’s “become clear that the level of resourcing required to further develop the technology to a workable state cannot be supported by the partners”.

And it has emerged that the Australian Network of Structural Health Monitoring, the peak industry body, warned the state government the project was not viable.

Engineering consultant and industry liaison for the Australian Network of Structural Health Monitoring, John Vazey, wrote to the Premier and Infrastructure Minister soon after the formation of Eloque was announced, warning of serious concerns about its viability.

“Most of the people who work in this industry wouldn’t have promised what Eloque promised, and what they promised wasn’t possible,” he told Neil Mitchell.

“I thought it had significant technical problems.”

Press PLAY below for detail on the warnings the state government ignored