With regional water distribution systems under pressure from ageing infrastructure, McConnell Dowell is applying cutting-edge solutions to support Australia’s booming regional communities.
With regional populations booming, the pressure to modernise water and energy infrastructure has never been greater.
Regional areas in Australia saw a net gain of over 160,000 individuals during the 2016-21 period – nearly triple the net gain of the previous five-year period.
While this wave of urban migration is a promising step towards addressing acute skills shortages in regional areas, it also means high-growth regions are facing significant strains on their energy and water infrastructure.
“With the escalation in the cost of living, you’ve got this challenge where water authorities are trying really hard to contain their water rates, but they also need to build new assets and renew or maintain ageing assets,” said Mario Russo, Managing Director for Australia at McConnell Dowell.
“There’s nothing shiny about cutting the ribbon on an underground pipe, so they also get limited funding. It’s a real tug-of-war.”
As one of Australia’s leading water infrastructure contractors, McConnell Dowell is supporting its clients to address these challenges in both the short and long term. Having delivered over 20,000 km of pipelines and more than 100 pump stations across Australia, the company has already played an instrumental role in ensuring reliable water supply to both regional and urban centres.
“We constantly find that the budget that’s allocated to deal with some of these problems is razor-sharp. So it requires a lot of innovation and smart ideas to come up with an end-of-cycle solution that will meet their needs. And that’s what we look to bring,” said Russo.
Creative construction
To help Australia’s water providers tackle these challenges, McConnell Dowell is involved in a suite of projects that will bolster water and energy networks across Australia’s regional communities.
This includes a collaboration with SA Water and joint venture partner Diona to deliver dam upgrades, storage construction and network enhancements in South Australia, and the delivery of over $300 million worth of water and wastewater assets per year in Queensland alone.
For instance, construction began earlier this year on the 117km-long Fitzroy to Gladstone pipeline, which will provide long-term water security for the Gladstone region and support the region’s emerging hydrogen sector.
The company is also embracing the role of water in emerging energy projects through transformative initiatives such as the Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro in Far North Queensland, which aims to turn a disused gold mine into a hydroelectric power facility capable of producing up to 250MW of energy for Queensland’s power grid.
At the heart of McConnell Dowell’s approach to all its projects is a commitment to developing creative, economic solutions that will stand the test of time. Embracing emerging technologies to identify obstacles and eliminate inefficiencies is a key element of its strategy to achieve this.
“[For example], we’ve invested in one tool in particular that’s like a 3D video game of our construction plant. You can go into this digital environment, operate equipment and pick up where all of your blind spots are before you go out into the real environment,” said Russo.
“We’re also doing a project in Queensland at the moment where the water treatment processing facilities are all 3D-modelled, so as you build them in real time, you can link it to the program and see how it will come together. It gives you the ability to pick up physical clashes in the design before you assemble it.”
The ability to catch these clashes early drastically reduces the likelihood of costly rework further down the line, and empowers utility companies to take on large-scale projects with more confidence and security.
A collaborative approach to complex challenges
Marrying together this client-focused mindset with McConnell Dowell’s team of internal subject matter experts across a range of disciplines is essential to delivering innovative solutions that really work.
Facilitating continuous knowledge-sharing between its in-house professionals from design, procurement and construction backgrounds allows the business to produce high-quality, long-lasting and cost-effective solutions.
“We carry a significant in-house engineering capability so that we can bring that right up-front and find ways of reducing the risk on our solutions,” says Russo.
“We also run a range of programs to give different people across the business the opportunity to throw ideas at challenges [we’re facing]. For example, we run a system called Better Ways, where anyone can go and post a challenge, [whether it’s] with a project, a tender, or just coming up with new ideas. And people jump in there and throw ideas at it – it might be someone in the administration team or a graduate on the other side of the country. And some of them just take off; you end up with this melting pot of all these ideas that leads to some pretty remarkable outcomes.”
Approaches like these are crucial for McConnell Dowell to tackle complex challenges with the creativity that distinguishes the organisation, said Russo.
“Our business is creative construction – and that’s a huge part of who we are.”