The MMC platform replaces bespoke project engineering with a productised modular architecture. The cost catalogue replaces bespoke project estimating with productised unit-rate engineering. Every structure and every service is costed once, in its own design page, and any deployment cost is the additive sum of those unit rates multiplied by the deployed quantities. Honest, auditable, additive.
Pre-feasibility estimates only
The numbers on these pages are pre-feasibility estimates (±30%). They are intended for programme-level comparison, capital allocation discussion, and policy work — not for binding contractual use. Detailed engineering, quantity surveying, geotechnical investigation, and procurement scoping are required before any of these figures can be used for project decisions.
The MMC platform is an architectural inversion of conventional continental infrastructure. The cost catalogue applies the same inversion to project estimating.
One. Costs are catalogued by design, not by project. Every MMC component — the MMC-VA Big Bertha viaduct, the MMC-VB workhorse, the MMC-VC ridge-route viaduct, the MMC-VD finger viaduct, the MMC-T transmission tower family, and every service that rides on those structures — has its own cost engineering page on this site. Foundation cost (the ATS caisson, drilled to a 10 m average baseline depth) is included within each structure’s cost engineering, not separated. Unit rates are stated per kilometre. Deployment cost is what you get when you multiply those unit rates by the kilometres of any specific project.
Two. Each structure page is split into three layers: Structure (the bare elevated platform — foundation, pylon, cap beam, deck, walkway), Services (service-specific equipment installed on the structure — service rail, power supports, fibre wireway, conductor brackets), and Install (all field labour and plant). The total per km is the sum of the three. The service items themselves — track, catenary, maglev guideway, HVDC conductors, water pipe, fibre cable, pumping infrastructure, stations — are catalogued separately on the relevant Service pages and added to deployment cost.
Three. Cost basis is stated openly for every unit rate. Some unit rates come from MMC internal cost engineering. Some come from public infrastructure benchmarks (Inland Rail per-km, AEMO transmission line per-km, Chinese maglev per-km, Snowy 2.0 tunnelling rates). Some require detailed project-specific scoping. Every number on these pages carries a label declaring which category it falls into. No black-box estimates. No anchoring on numbers without a stated source.
Any MMC project capex is the additive stack of three layers: structure × kilometres, services × kilometres, plus station and interface counts. Each layer draws from its own cost catalogue page. The arithmetic is deliberately exposed.
The deployment cost is the sum of the structure, the services that ride on it, and the discrete interface counts. Each term is the product of a catalogue unit rate and a deployed quantity.
The same arithmetic applies to every other deployment in the SBC programme — Phase 0 spurs, Phase 1 continental corridors, the Sovereign Aqueduct Network water-capture fingers, the Pilbara spaceport interface, every regional deployment. Different structure choices, different service combinations, different station counts. Same cost catalogue. Same auditable arithmetic.
Every unit rate on the per-design pages carries a label declaring its basis. The four categories are stated openly so that any analyst — investor, government department, ratings agency, peer engineer — can weigh the cost case on its merits.
Cost engineering produced by the MMC platform design work. Material take-offs from the engineering memos, manufacturing rates from the Megafactory model, install rates from MMC construction methodology. Sources documented within the relevant memo.
Per-kilometre or per-unit rates from comparable public infrastructure projects. Inland Rail published rates, AEMO transmission line rates, HSRA published estimates, Chinese maglev published rates, Snowy 2.0 tunnelling, comparable Australian and global precedents. Source cited inline.
Cost depends on the specific deployment — foundation depth varies with geology, pumping infrastructure varies with lift and demand profile, station scale varies with passenger volume. These items are flagged for detailed scoping in any binding-grade cost estimate.
Cost engineering work in progress under the MMC platform design. Will be populated as the detailed unit-rate work completes. Where structural ranges can be stated honestly today, they are; where they cannot, the cell is held empty rather than filled with anchoring numbers.
The catalogue is organised by the two-layer model. Structure pages cost the physical viaduct or tower itself. Services pages cost what rides on the structure. Any deployment draws its cost from one structure page plus the relevant subset of service pages.
Five-level dual-leg continental viaduct. 50 m to top deck. Carries freight rail, services, hyperloop reservation, maglev top deck, plus the transcontinental aqueduct as governing load case. The continental main-artery configuration.
Read the cost page →Two-level dual-leg viaduct. Freight rail at 6 m, maglev passenger at 17 m, plus HVDC arms, gas, hydrogen, water, and fibre on one structure. The Phase 0 corridor workhorse.
Read the cost page →Single-leg single-deck ridge-route viaduct. Variable-height capability 6 m to 150 m+. Self-building ridge construction methodology. Maglev passenger only at 600 km/h.
Read the cost page →Single-leg single-level water-corridor viaduct. Carries water pipe, power line, service rail, and fibre. The self-building structure used for water-capture fingers off the MMC-VA main aqueduct and for last-mile water delivery.
Read the cost page →Two coupled MMC pylons with three captured cross-beams. High-voltage strain towers, river crossings, and heavy conductor loading up to ±1100 kV UHVDC.
Read the cost page →Single-pylon transmission tower covering ~80% of MMC transmission deployments — 132 kV through ±500 kV HVDC suspension. The Phase 0 transmission backbone.
Read the cost page →Standard MMC-TB pylon supplemented by three guy wires and ground anchors. Extends single-pylon voltage range. Used in remote unconstrained corridors — outback, mining, defence.
Read the cost page →Heavy-haul freight rail track, sleepers/slab, fasteners, switches, plus overhead catenary and traction power conditioning. Costed together because freight operators specify the package as one.
In developmentLevitation rail, propulsion stator, signalling, and dispatch infrastructure for the corridor maglev passenger service. Costed per kilometre of deployed guideway.
In developmentHVDC conductors, insulators, accessories, and converter terminal stations. Costed per kilometre of deployed transmission line and per terminal station. Rides on MMC-T towers or MMC-VA / MMC-VB viaduct arms.
In developmentThe large continental aqueduct conduit deployed on MMC-VA Big Bertha. Pipe diameter, gaskets, expansion joints, monitoring, and treatment-plant interfaces. The main artery for continental water transport.
In developmentThe branch water pipe deployed on MMC-VB. Smaller than the MMC-VA aqueduct, for distribution and corridor-town water delivery. Costed per kilometre by pipe diameter.
In developmentPump stations, drive motors, control systems, surge protection, building works. Cost is fundamentally project-specific — depends on lift, distance, flow rate, redundancy. Order-of-magnitude estimates for typical configurations, with explicit scoping caveats.
In developmentFibre optic cable, conduit, repeaters, cameras, SCADA equipment, control cabinets, security monitoring. The operational nervous system for every MMC corridor.
In developmentPassenger maglev stations, freight intermodal terminals, AI campus interfaces, water-network injection points, and corridor-town interface structures. Cost varies by scale and function.
In developmentThe cost catalogue is pre-feasibility-grade. Unit rates and ranges shown across these pages are produced under the MMC platform design work and the open methodology described above. They are intended for programme-level comparison, capital allocation discussion, and policy work — not for binding contractual use. Any binding-grade cost estimate requires detailed engineering scoping against the specific deployment route, geology, services configuration, and procurement strategy. The MMC platform is sovereign Australian intellectual property authored under the editorial direction of Brett Murrell; the cost catalogue is authored by the same team under the same disclosure framework as the engineering memo series.
The catalogue is updated as design and scoping completes. Cells held empty today will be populated as work continues. Cells with a stated range will be tightened as benchmarks and internal modelling improve. The work is open. Cite freely.