Barry Yardley
Welcome to
session three, Current Development Issues. Okay firstly I'd like
to welcome our first speak, Phil Mulvey who is the Managing Director,
Principal Soil Scientist and Contaminant Hydrologist with Environmental
Earth Sciences. Phil has 20 years experience and has a Degree in
Soil Science and a Masters in Hydrogeology (which is ground water).
Phil has extensive involvement in contaminant waste and mining industries
and is a contaminant land environment auditor. I'd like you to welcome
Phil to the stage.
Phil Mulvey - 'Impact of Acid Suplhate Soils on the Development
Process'
Just while
the screen warms up, I'd like to talk about science and legislation;
which many people might view as a marriage of two boring fields.
So it's going to be a boring talk. Unfortunately I've got about
60 slides to get through in a very rapidly reducing timeframe. By
Monday on the website, which will come up as the last slide, you
will find opportunity to download what's going to whip past you
at 80 miles an hour. I apologise for that and hope you will find
that the offspring of marriage and legislation is not one boring
child.
I'd like to
cover contaminated sites and the focus of the first part of the
talk, acid sulphate soils, which are sort of limited to the people
on the coast, and legislation in NSW. So briefly focussing on where
is Councils responsibility which then affects yourselves and what
they're going to do the first comes in on the Environmental Planning
& Assessment Act 145B which basically says the planning authority's
saved from being taken to Court, if they make a decision in good
faith and good faith says they must follow DUAP guidelines and DUAP
guidelines for acid sulphate soils are these, they're about to be
reissued and for contaminated sites are SEPP 55 and the planning
guidelines for contaminated sites. So Council will refer to those
all the time.
You jump down
in that legislation to Section 79C where it gives issues to be considered
and under soil it lists remediation contaminated soil and management
of acid sulphate soil. So really before you can consider any subdivision
or development there are issues that require consideration.
What are acid
sulphate soils? You've read the news they've killed fish; fishermen,
oyster farmers are pretty upset; farmers are upset, they're not
quite too sure what the issues about. Acid sulphate soils are a
natural substance called pyrites, which when exposed or dug up or
drained produces sulphuric acid with a pH less than Coca Cola and
once you know what the pH of Coca Cola is you don't want to drink
it, its below 2. Chardonnay is about 3.5.
Where do they
occur, they occur right round the coast of Australia Adelaide being
the slow or South Australia being slow and sleepy actually has developed
a whole new type of acid sulphate soil on dry land areas, but effectively
you can say all the coast of NSW.
They are laid
down and Professor Thom is in the room so he may well remember this
particular cross section, they are laid down working your way up
from the coast under the flood plain in a series of deposition environments.
They can occur both in sand and in mud but are frequently in greater
concentration in mud. You all know what mangrove mud is like; that's
the material that's unoxidised. Its known as PAS. I only say PAS
because I end up with ARSE or ASS depending how you pronounce A
S S, so I have to be careful, but potential acid sulphate soils
are those that haven't gone off, they're not a problem yet but they
will be.
Actual acid
sulphate cells are a problem now and then you've got partially oxidised
material which is in the process of becoming a problem. The nature
in which the form naturally is there an infra red pointer [MOVED
AWAY FROM MICROPHONE] you also get a situation in a tidal creek
where the pyrite is laid down in salt water sedges behind the mangroves.
What happens is that these mangroves have followed the sea out and
back depending on where you were in geological time and this material
is being laid down under all the coastal areas but typically within
5 metres AHD but not always.
What happens
is they age and you end up with a situation where you put drains
in you get material that generates acid it goes into the drain,
this looks pretty good except some odd [Can't hear] but the effect
of the drain is major, you get a lot of fish kills, unfortunately
from a tourist's point of view the drain is crystal clear, looks
fantastic because the pH is so low everything is dead except acid
tolerant macrophites which is grasses. So when you see lovely clear
water in those canals in Queensland don't buy the land.
I'll take
you quickly through some slides of occurrences, this is mangrove,
most of these are in the Sydney catchment area, this is Mangrove
Creek as you can see in the back the Casuarinas there has been a
push up of the berm to stop seawater coming in and flooding the
pasture, Council got involved in this and it went to Court but you've
got a scald there and its been sitting there for about 8 years.
In the same
area this is Poprin Creek you've got an excavated drain, and once
again you can see a scald behind it with also Casuarinas. The pH
of that particular water is around about 3 its got iron flock floating
in it, its quite crystal clear and it's got the tolerant macroflites.
I don't want
to go through too much chemistry but the main bits is pyrite which
occurs in the mud plus oxygen plus water gives sulphuric acid and
iron. The thing to understand is that you need oxygen and water
together. If it's completely dry no reaction, if it's completely
wet no reaction.
Little bit
more chemistry, basically what happens is the iron that goes into
water comes out as iron flock, you may well have seen this beneath
excavations where you get the iron flock precipitating out as the
iron flock precipitates out it actually generates a lot more acid
as this occurs, so the water becomes more acid than the soil.
This is discharge
from excavated sand from a development further north and I won't
say anything further, I might be sued, you've got a situation where
the iron flock is coming out quite readily. That's caused a fair
degree of problems not only visually but impacts on the mangroves.
Now is it
all gloom? Certainly at the moment one would get the impression
that acid sulphate soils is definitely a gloomy situation. The answer
is no. You can develop on acid sulphate soils and the government
is not of the opinion they should stop development on acid sulphate
soils. Naturally acid sulphate soils have shells in them, they have
skeletons of micro fauna, and these calcium rich neutralising rich
substances also act to buffer the acid that's generated. So you
have a natural buffering capacity. What is required for you to assess
and what is the Council expected to do? This is all defined within
the Acid Sulphate Soil Manual which is issued by DUAP which is about
to be updated.
But the first
step is identification and luckily the government has made it easy
for everyone, they've issued acid sulphate soil maps on the coast
and they're available from DLWC (I think they're about $15 each).
If you fall in that map as being a risk area then Council will definitely
require work of you in any submission and the first lot of work
requires a preliminary investigation to establish you are actually
on acid sulphate soil areas and if you are it will require detailed
mapping.
The maps the
DLWC produce are somewhat like this. What you've got here is you've
got the sand dune area so you've got acid sulphate soils under that
about 10 metres down so it won't affect the development, you've
got an area here that's between 3 and 5 metres, you've got an area
there less than 2 metres and then you've got Tiligary Creek so you've
got an abayment, this is up at Port Stephens. So you've got a situation
where if you're looking at development in here you know the Council
require acid sulphate soils surveys straight off, if you're looking
for development up here it probably won't but if you're excavating
potentially into them you've got issues to consider as well.
There are
a whole variety of different equipment that's done to sample acid
sulphate soils; we have lightweight drill rigs, when we have to
get across areas that are fairly boggy, if you break through the
peat the material sticks atrophic and I've actually seen drill rigs
like this disappear up to the tray and having to have several D7s
to actually pull it some distance away to get it out. This is the
M5 east and the Cooks River extension, you will see further shots
shortly where there's extensive acid sulphate soils resulting in
a lot of problems.
You'll get
a field assessment produce logs and you're quite familiar with logs
from a geotechnical point of view these follow the same format.
At the end
of the report you'll come up with a table and this is one of our
tables so I can't say its quite DUAP but you've got a situation
with risk and no risk where you're dealing with presence of sulphur
under different categories of soil due to texture, then you've got
a situation where the soil is self neutralising so you have no risk.
Then you have moderate risk and in these instances you can develop
without many controls, moderate risks you might have to have some
controls, and high risk you'll have to have significant controls
or potentially advise your clients certain areas cannot be developed.
Mind you in
some of these areas you're also in less than 1:100 year flooding
and so on there are other constraints as well that often go together.
Other things
to be aware of is it can release heavy metals, corrode engineering
structures, you get substance it can clog aquafers wells and water
ways. If you put pipes for service stations under there these are
some of the problems you can get, this is 18 months old. Be aware
also that the material when its laid down becomes rock, the sulphides
are still there and you can get if you know the Mudgee overpass
you can get significant amounts of pyrite occurring at the base
of the permium sequence. This is a permium conglomerates. Notice
the attack on the pavement there they'll probably have to consider
work on that structure of the bridge within 5-6 years, look at the
impacts on the rusting of the steel girders, attack on concrete
etc. It can be very quick, that orange patch here is actually a
mineral alonite but this is on the M2, just at the Epping Road turnoff
- just after the tollgates. Have a look when you next go past, it's
a nice big yellow spot, it is fairly unusual to see - Hawkesbury
sands don't have it but it does occur in small areas. So just be
aware of advising for sub divisions just be a little bit conscious
of the sulphides in rocks as well.
Management
is straight forward, avoidance, prevention, neutralisation, oxidation,
leeching, pyrite removal. I can't go into all that quickly but essentially
the most favoured option usually by Council and government is, if
possible, avoid now clearly most developers aren't so favourable
with that option; but if you can't avoid you need to look at other
options. Because they're low lying areas, burying if it hasn't become
actual acid sulphate soil, in other words put fill over the top
can be satisfactory but you need to watch the rise of the water
table and the drainage issues on neighbouring properties.
Burying as
in digging up and reburying is an excellent treatment opportunity
as well. This is bulk excavation from the M5, you can see the nature
of the material when compacted, when its uncompacted or unconsolidated
its quite jelly-like when its consolidated its quite stiff, but
its still highly reactive. This material is dug out, tracked off
and placed under the water table in a sand mine perfectly adequate
and excellent environmental solution for that situation.
You can neutralise
it with lime, flooding is undertaken in Queensland, less so in NSW
in seawater using the natural buffering capacity of sea water, the
problem with that as an ongoing situation is you pinch the carbonate
for the shells to make their bodies to move around in, so you end
up with other issues that are a problem.
Oxidation
leeching with sand you could rapidly oxidise it then treat it, or
you can remove the pyrite by typical mining techniques such as hydrocyclans.
If you're in a high risk area even after you've done the development
there will be requirements for ongoing monitoring, both ground water
and surface water and there will be inspections of structures etc.
If you've got canals there will be dredging requirements and there
are a lot of issues associated with those so don't think you can
walk away from and you need to advise your client that once its
done there will be ongoing obligations.
Sorry to rush
through that as I said I'll refer you to the website later.
Review of
Councils obligations in regard to contaminated land and the audit
process. This is topical at the moment because increasingly a lot
of Councils are calling for audits all the time and calling for
full environmental investigations on dairy paddocks that have never
had anything on them. So you need to go through what is the requirements
and under Contaminated Land & Planning laws which Council have
to refer to before making a decision; its very clear that you only
need a Contaminated Lands report where there is reason to suspect
contaminated land. Now these days there is reason to expect contaminated
land everywhere except two instances, one is complete green fields
that have never been developed and the other is sheep and cattle
paddocks that have no associated agricultural infrastructure with
them.
There is a
requirement under SEPP 55 which Councils have to follow to consider
contamination, but if you look at point 2 where I've got it in bold,
you indicate that Councils have to at the very minimum when there
is a change of land use, have a preliminary contamination investigation
done. So no matter what if there is any change of land use, Council
under SEPP 55 will ask for an environmental site assessment stage
1.
The planning
guidelines indicate what that is, it's only to establish whether
further work is necessary. So that's all you need to submit for
a DA even if further work may be required it can be conditioned
under DA.
What is a
site audit? A site audit is an independent review by bunnies like
me taking responsibility off the Council and the EPI. That's what
a site audit is there's a lot more legal jargon about it but essentially
we take over the responsibility of saying the site is safe.
There are
certain situations when you would have a site audit and its defined
within these guidelines. Now the cost of an audit is very expensive,
if you look at the cost of a contaminated site investigation to
the detail necessarily for an audit, it will cost you a minimum
of $8-10,000. If you then have an audit on top of it, it will be
in the same price range. So if you're selling off a block of land
at Junee that's worth $15,000 and it was a former service station,
before you even do anything you've got a $20,000 expenditure. So
we have to look at when is a site audit necessary and its very important
this be considered. So you need to have ammunition to be able to
say to Council refer to SEPP 55 of the Planning Guidelines, an audit
is not necessary in this instance because, the three instances stated,
audit is necessary when the Council believes information is incorrect
or incomplete. Council requires verification proponent has adhered
to appropriate guidelines, and Council is unable to undertake its
own technical review. This is increasingly becoming less frequent
for the standard investigations because Councils have their own
review teams.
What's happened
recently was a court case late last year Botany Bay City Council
versus Lignon 158 Pty Ltd (isn't that a classic developers name,
we want to protect our butt and set up a $2 company thats promptly
going to retire as soon as this development is done). But the judgment
that came out of that was the test as to whether an audit statement
is required is based on reasonable ground that the information is
incomplete. The judge decided on this basis that the information
was delivered by a reputable consultant, it was a member of a consultant
group called Australian Contaminated Land Consultants Association,
had thoroughly addressed the issue and in the Commission's opinion
there was no need for an audit. So this actually has a bearing for
all Councils to consider in situations when is an audit necessary.
I apologise
for cramming everything in and rushing through I've indicated you'll
find a lot more information with that website particularly regarding
this paper that will be up by Monday but you'll find 4-5 papers
on acid sulphate soils and quite a few papers on planning aspects
in NSW & Victoria on contaminated land. You just follow the
links when you go into the site to papers and seminars and just
take the paper and seminar you want to look at. Sorry to rush through.
Our experience in NSW we actually have four officers in NSW (well
Canberra) loosely speaking so we have Ballina & Orange, Sydney
and Canberra so we're certainly understands the issues associated
with development both regionally and within the Sydney metro area.
Thanks for your time.
Barry Yardley
Phil has very
quickly got us back on track with our timing. Our next speaker is
Bernie Cohen. Bernie is a founding director of Essential Certifiers,
a pioneering company in private certification of building in NSW.
Prior to his private business activity, Bernie had extensive experience
in local government working at Liverpool, Parramatta, Bankstown
and Canterbury Councils over 20 years. Bernie is a member of the
HIA Planning Committee and his presentation is on the Certification
System that we are using today. Welcome Bernie.
Sorry, we've
got to load up a laptop here at the moment. I understand this will
take a minute.
While we're
waiting for that would anybody have any questions for Phil regarding
the acid sulphate soils.
Gordon Wren
Always good
for a question, Ligon 158 P/L won the case not requiring the site
audit, wouldn't it be cheaper to do the site audit?
Philip Mulvey
You're quite
correct, it would have been cheaper if it was just on the site audit
but the consultants recommended no remediation was necessary and
Council suggested it was needed, the ground water was contaminated
5 metres down and mediation costs were in the order of several hundred
thousand dollars so the consultant was arguing there was no remediation
required. Council was saying they wanted a second opinion being
the auditor and the Judge said firstly they're in a position to
be able to draw information from the consultants report themselves
and secondly he agreed that remediation in this instance was unnecessary.
Just on that particular site, Botany Bay has a lot of groundwater
contamination from one or two areas in particular, industries that
have spread under the whole area and this was a regional contamination
issue that the site owner was being asked on his site from somebody
else's pollution to address by Council even though there was no
harm associated with all the occupiers of that site.
Barry Yardley
Okay we'll
hold the rest of the questions for Phil for later and we'll get
Bernie going, thanks.
Bernie Cohen - 'The Private Certification Process for Residential
Constriction in NSW'
Thank you
very much good afternoon everybody. I'm Bernie Cohen. I'm the Principal
of Essential Certifiers, a certification company which has been
operating for about three years in the greater Sydney area. When
we talk about the greater Sydney area our company covers areas from
Port Stephens to Nowra to the Blue Mountains. We've done the odd
job out at Mudgee for certain clients but we try and restrict ourselves
to Sydney if we can.
Private certification
in NSW was approved in July 1998 by the NSW government. Mainstream
building certification did not commence really until February 1999
when the BSAP scheme was approved by DUAP, now BSAP is an organisation
called the 'Building Surveyors & Allied Professionals' it's
a certification organisation which looks after building surveyors
in the whole of Australia. They're based in South Australia and
they look after and ensure that the certifiers are doing the right
thing in all different States. There are two types of certifiers.
The group that I work for are 'accredited certifiers - building'
in NSW there are currently 150 people who have that accreditation
under BSP. We also have accredited certifiers civil which are certified
or controlled by the Institute of Engineers, there are 70 of those
in NSW with 7 specifically approved for subdivision so there are
only 7 people in that game at the moment. There was a scheme which
has been approved by the government for planning but its limited
in its introduction due to legislative controls.
Earlier today
we had a talk from Kerry Bedford of DUAP and I think there is some
expectation from the planners out there that 'Plan First' will deliver
them their opportunity to get out and do some certification but
time will tell that will probably be 3-4 years away.
Certifiers
- building what do they do everybody says. Building certifiers approve
construction certificates after the DA consent. That's the old BA
after DA essentially the government felt that we needed to streamline
the process and get faster approval times out of Council so they
moved into the private sector. The other activity that certifiers
get into is approving complying development certificates, they are
the original BA. There was an expectation from the government and
was mooted by the planning methods of today that 80% of the old
applications that we dealt with would be dealt with as complying
development certificates. Unfortunately, the reality is it's running
around about 4% but I'll talk about that later on.
Certifiers
- civil; what do they get up, they approve construction certificates
after DA consent for civil works eg on site detention, driveways,
access ways. They also issue complying component certificates for
drainage, road works but these are only on private land and public
roads in the majority of council areas. Some councils have by the
use of the Roads Act taken back control of gutter crossings, footpath
road drainage on their land including Liverpool, Blacktown and Baulkham
Hills. When we look at Sutherland Council they've recently written
to all the certifiers saying that if an engineer or surveyor wants
to work within their area then they will be expected to be accredited.
We're still waiting to hear from DUAP whether in fact they're going
to be able to do that but it'll be an interesting couple of weeks
coming up because that starts on the first of next month.
Civil Certifiers
also approves subdivision certificates after DA consent where permission
under Council LEP unfortunately the only Council allowing this is
Orange City. I guess Orange City is not expecting too much competition.
And the final
thing and probably the activity that will probably interest most
of you people in the room is to issue strata certificate for registration
at the Land Titles Office. I understand that only one certificate
has been registered by a private certifier at the LTO to date but
there will be from the advice that I'm getting from the clients
that I service we look after a lot of unit developers that they
are certainly very interested in getting involved in issuing strata
certificates by private people.
The Principal
certifying authority: Everybody thinks that the accredited certifiers
and the principal certifying authority are the same person; that
is not the case. An accredited certifier or a PCA he inspects work
during construction and issues compliance certificates. Now when
we look at that the compliance certificates; depending on which
Council you're working in determines the timing and the number of
certificates that you have to issue. If you have a consent say from
Pittwater Council; on their consents there is an expectation that
up to 25 compliance certificates are required. In reality, prior
to certification there was possibly only 3, 4 or maybe 5 inspections
carried out by Council officers. In our organization; what we do
we rely on certification from surveyors we rely on certification
from engineers; we rely on certification from pest control people
and they are put into Council with a covering letter in that particular
Council area. But there is an expectation in that Council that they
are issued within 7 days that is the only Council that requires
them at that point. We generally attach all our certification with
the interim or final occupation certificate.
The interim
or final occupation certificate they're two different animals again.
The interim occupation certificate is the certificate which is issued
where a building is completed and its found to be suitable for occupation.
Interestingly under the Act class 1 and class 10 buildings don't
require to have any occupation certificates you can just go out
there, build them and do what you like. Councils by their conditions
have put that back in the game, they're saying they do want occupation
certificates so in essence an interim occupation certificate is
say where the building is completed but the on site detention might
not be installed, landscaping might not be in, retaining walls might
not be constructed, or indeed there might even be some conditions
of consent issued by the Council that haven't been met. The final
occupation certificate however is where everything is done; all
the OSD, landscaping all the conditions have been satisfied. There
is some conjecture out there particularly at Council level where
they're saying that the final occupation certificate does not necessarily
mean all the conditions have been met. We at Essential Certifiers
do not issue a final occupation certificate unless all the conditions
have been met.
Again I reiterate
the PCA is not necessarily the accredited certifier who issued the
construction certificate. There are some certifiers or accredited
certifiers who will only issue construction certificates and won't
get involved in the PCA work. The PCA work is actually going out
to the site and making sure the job is done properly. The downside
of that unfortunately is that there are some people out there who
get their construction certificate, they think beauty I don't have
to do anything else now, they get on and build their building don't
have anybody come down to have a look at the building, they get
to the end and then they're looking for certification from someone.
Unfortunately it's not forthcoming - certainly not from my organisation.
Council's
role. Council has the opportunity to do any of the above certification.
However the intensity of competition for the work or the interest
varies from Council to Council dependent upon the liability they
wish to expose themselves to. Many Council's such as North Sydney
have made it clear they're not interested in doing what we do. The
way to get themselves out of that they've placed very high costs
on their construction certificates and inspection services. As a
result of that the people in their particular area I think there's
round a 92% takeup in private certification in that area. There's
only about 8% left.
Bankstown
and Sutherland have set up business units to actively compete. Sydney
city also actively compete with in their area and they will compete
on price. Rockdale Council are consistently attempting to win business
from companies operating in its area by offering reduced DA and
CC processing times, I don't know whether that's legal or not but
they're doing it. Liverpool and Wyong provide a low cost CC that
private certifiers cannot meet in terms of the fees charged. Wyong's
are free if you get a DA/CC. If you get a DA and then go to a private
certifier for the CC then you'll pay probably $300-400 more.
Some Councils,
by stealth, try to stymie the process egg Holroyd & Sutherland
Council s require fully worked up landscape and storm water drainage
plans with DA submissions contrary to advice from DUAP. Hornsby
Council requires a CC to be issued at the cost of $400 from them
for the concrete path that services the cross over point on back
to back dual occupancies. When we raise those issues with DUAP there
seems to be reluctance for them to get involved and do anything
about it.
Is certification
working? According to local government, no; but in reality its an
outstanding success. 60% of all CCs are currently issued by private
certifiers in NSW. These figures have been delivered by the Bureau
of Statistics. When we first started off Councils were being a bit
underhanded they weren't putting through the submissions to the
Bureau on what private certifiers were doing. All certifiers now
in NSW lodge directly to the Bureau of Statistics so they get a
better picture on what's actually happening out there.
What can you
expect if you use a certifier? Home owners, builders, land developers
and developers can expect to receive the following from a private
certifier. Utmost integrity in performing duties, optimum service
at all times, consistency of assessment and inspection, and I think
when we look at consistency of assessment and inspection, I think
that's what the business community wants. They don't want the fact
that they might work in 40-50 different Councils and it varies from
Council to Council. When they come to our company they get consistency
through the organisation. And the final thing, reasonable fees for
service.
We talked
about complying development earlier and the questions got to be
asked is complying development working? In a nutshell, no; and you
have to ask why. The policy controls which have been prepared by
Councils and submitted to DUAP for approval interfere with the activities
of private certifiers and Council itself when they approve these
certificates and I'll highlight some areas. When we look at Hastings
Shire Council north of NSW they went out and said right we want
to capture this business for our Council so they set up their controls
so they could actually go in there and actively engage with private
certifiers and deliver the outcomes that was expected. They hold
95% of the business still in their area and they are meeting the
7 day turnaround time which is required by the Act. Some of the
controls which knock complying development out is land area controls.
Look at Penrith for instance. What they've said is it can only be
a complying development if the land area is over 450 square metres.
When we look at the sub divisions in Penrith most of the allotments
of land are under 450 and so therefore they've got to go to Council
and get a DA.
Cut and fill
controls. Until complying development came in; the cut and field
control norm in Sydney was one metre and one metre. In their wisdom
the Council said well what we're going to do we're going to make
it a 500 cut and fill policy and so therefore if you're going to
go over that 500 now when we look at the blocks of land we all work
on there's very few with only a metre fall on them so therefore
we have to go back to Council for a DA. The most interesting thing
with this is that under the DA process there are many, many buildings
which have been approved particularly on Greenfield sites with up
to 2 metres cut and fill. Clearly when you look down those subdivisions
there is really no tangible benefit from getting a DA for that process.
Two storey
dwellings; they can only be approved by certifiers in Campbelltown,
there is no other Council area where they're allowed because their
policies don't permit it.
The final
and most interesting one, height restrictions at 2.4 metres where
its commonplace for a garage to have 2.6 metre ceiling height just
to cater for the garage roller door so therefore if we've got 2.6
in one section of the building it goes back for a DA.
Is there a
solution? in short - yes. We've had certain discussions with DUAP
and we've made various submissions over probably the past 4.5 months
because of the expectation from the Minister that he wanted more
but he's getting less and they said well what is your solution.
We put to
the government that SEPP 60 which is the policy which would set
up for implementation over Council area where they didn't get off
their backsides to prepare their own policies and the government
said well we're going to develop our own policy and these are going
to be the rules we're going to work to.
Now when we
look at SEPP 60, SEPP 60 works in Campbelltown. At our organisation
we have around about a 50/50 ratio CC complying development to DA
in the work that we do. When we look at that its in the order of
around 52 dwellings that we've approved without having to get a
DA. When we talk about the approval that is 7 days after submission
not the normal 35 which we're seeing. Now with the SEPP there is
an expectation that it should be really put over the UDP lands,
you know neighbour notification is really not an issue, there is
an expectation when you go onto these greenfield sites that there
will be 1-2 storey dwellings, if its 3 storeys, yes, fine DA, not
a problem but I think there would be an expectation that if the
industry could get SEPP 60 over the UDP lands then everybody would
be much better off and would have a faster turnaround time from
the current 35 days to 7 days.
When we look
back at the original White Paper and the discussions that the DUAP
told the community that was the initial reason for the reform.
The future.
The general building and development industry has adopted private
certification with the result of certainty of professional assessment
of its construction plans. They enjoy that today. This situation
will, I believe, increase in the current 60% level of CCs issued
by a private certifier to 90% or possibly 100% if complying development
controls are amended to provide sufficient scope for realistic outcomes.
Thank you
very much.
Barry Yardley
Thank you
Bernie. Our third speaker is Tom Jellibrand. Tom is the manager
for Business Customers with Sydney Water. He is responsible for
servicing the developer and commercial industrial customer segments.
Tom operates a tradewaste acceptance service, manages backflow prevention
program and negotiates with developers planning to connect to or
expand Sydney Water's infrastructure. Tom has extensive experience
working in State and local government as well as working with the
Urban Development Industry. Tom's presentation will focus on a new
business and IT model for managing the urban development process
in Sydney Water. Welcome Tom.
Tom Jellibrand
- 'The e-Developer initiative'
Thank you
Barry. As Barry said I'm going to talk to you today about a new
concept that Sydney Water is introducing its called the e-developer
principally because if we call it developer nobody would be interested
you put a small 'e' in front and everybody is excited.
The actual
concept it's a new business model for delivering service and behind
it to enable that model to operate is a new IT system. The important
reason for saying that is, it's not all about IT.
I'm then going
to then talk about a new player in the process, which is a person
we're going to be calling a Water Servicing Coordinator. I'll give
you a quick overview of the benefits of the new model and the new
system then you can ask questions but I think you will have to ask
questions when we have the panel at the end.
e-developer.
As a system it's a new method for the lodgment, assessment and the
management of development work which is the normal urban development
work that people need to go through as part of their DA's the sort
of thing that Barry was touching sorry Bernie was touching on beforehand.
If you've got a DA you'll get conditions of consent, go see Sydney
Water section 73 certificate construction building water mains etc
etc. So this e-developer concept relates to that.
It's an important
step towards a real 'one stop' shop for Sydney Water customers.
As I said before, there is an IT component to it and its part of
an overall approach in Sydney Water which is a new customer information
and billing system which covers pretty much all of our processes,
products and services that we offer in customer services.
The e-developer
concept is going to provide an automated and standardised process
for connections. For probably most of you who have dealt with Sydney
Water over the years you may have found a variable level of service,
according to what office you went to, Sydney Water is a big organization,
it had 11 different offices run by probably about 100 different
people and from time to time you got different solutions according
to which office you went to, which wasn't always a good thing.
So this system
is actually going to be introducing a more standardised approach
to management of work. As I mentioned before, there is an IT component
and in the future all work with Sydney Water in terms of the urban
development work is going to be occurring via electronic links operated
by these water servicing coordinators. The coordinators are going
to be getting access to Sydney Water via the web.
In terms of
how it looks, this is a very high level reasonably conceptual sort
of diagram. You've got the customer over here which is the developer
or the developer's customer who accesses a person called an agent
which we're actually calling the water servicing coordinator and
then via the Internet that agent or water servicing coordinator
is going to be lodging all the information that Sydney Water requires
for processing the application. Let's say it's a Section 73 application,
which is satisfying Sydney Water's requirements for connection,
which is pretty much a standard condition in all Council consents.
So that comes
to Sydney Water via the Internet and then when it comes into Sydney
Water it goes to our Sydney Water personnel and it moves around
Sydney Water electronically. In the past people had to copy things
and send them to different offices to our system guys our water
guys our waste water guys, our property guys, all over Sydney which
was quite a slow time consuming process, it was manual; relied on
faxes, e-mails paper letters all sorts of things very, very slow,
that'll all be happening electronically by a thing called 'Work
Flow' so that according to the type of application depending on
the type of application we receive, it'll actually be automatically
routed through the areas that need to look at it and comment on
it which is indicated by these cogs here, that's the work flow working.
And there is a mechanism in there as well which allows for the automatic
billing back to that water servicing coordinator. I think that's
the salient features of the model.
The e-developer
concept is, I know you've heard this probably a thousand times,
but for Sydney Water its probably one of the most demonstrable realistic
first steps to providing a 'one stop' shop for our customers. So
that in the past and currently today customers actually have to
go to the Council, they get their consent, the Council tells them
to see Sydney Water, Sydney Water plays with them for a little while
and gives them a 'Notice of Requirements' saying 'no you have to
go and talk to somebody else', then they talk to somebody else who
then comes back to talk to Sydney Water and then we talk to that
person again and then they often go back to the customer and say
crikey this is going to involve a whole lot of work do you want
to build a whole lot of pipes and the customer says 'yes, yes I
still want to go ahead', so that person then comes back to Sydney
Water and then there's a whole lot of work that happens and as that
work's occurring there's lots of talks between Sydney Water and
this person and quite often the customer gets involved and at the
end of sometimes quite a lengthy process, the customer gets what
they want which is usually a little bit of paper which says it's
a Section 73 certificate. So what's happening in that situation
is the customer, and the customers consultants, are getting bounced
quite a lot around different organisations and different people
inside Sydney Water.
This approach
is one way of shortening it and we're saying to the customer instead
of coming to see us just go straight away to this person that we're
calling a Water Servicing Coordinator and they'll take you all the
way through the process, and they can do it from their garage they
can do it from their office, from potentially your living room because
its all going to be electronic, we actually don't want to see them,
we don't want them to come to our counter, they don't need to come
to our counter, and most of them don't actually want to themselves.
The Water
Servicing Coordinator will be the person responsible for doing the
lodgment of all the information for Sydney Water and negotiating
the assessment with Sydney Water but they're also going to be the
person responsible for managing the works that Sydney Water requires
and they're also going to be responsible for recording minor works
activities and also handling applications for technical services,
I don't want to get involved with too many of the ins and outs of
different Sydney Water products and services but the Water Servicing
Coordinators will be handling pretty much all of the applications
that you can make under the umbrella of urban development. So it's
probably opportune that I talk a little bit more about water servicing
coordinators.
In terms of
the selection of these water servicing coordinators we're going
to select them from our existing pool of project managers and I'm
assuming a certain level of knowledge here. We've got an existing
list of project managers and they've been accredited, for want of
a better word, with us at the moment and they're able to actually
build infrastructure on behalf of customers. That's the group of
people we'll be going to and saying which of you people would like
to be water servicing coordinators.
So the minimum
requirements for a water servicing coordinator is that you have
to be a project manager but there is also going to be some additional
requirements and they will include such things as volume of work
we want water servicing coordinators that actually have a stream
of work, we don't want project managers to only do one job a year
we want the ones that do hundreds maybe not that many. We're going
to look at the geographical location of the Water Servicing Coordinators
because we want to make sure that there is a reasonable spread across
the Sydney area. The coordinators are going to need to be able to
demonstrate a certain level of customer service and either going
to the customers location or having a place within their office
that customers can go to. They need to successfully complete training,
they need to have a certain base level of hardware, which I think
most of them would have anyway. The arrangements that we're going
to be having with the Water Service Coordinators is actually going
to be a formal contract which is pretty important because it will
enable both parties to actually introduce a bit of rigor into the
relationship so that we can get some really good quality work happening
in terms of the assets at the end of the process as well as the
customers throughout the process.
So I've just
started touching on some of the key benefits of the change. In terms
of the applicant, we think that the applicant or the customer will
see reduced turnaround times specifically because they're going
to a person up front that can take them through the whole process
and that when the work actually comes in to Sydney Water instead
of us manually handling it as we have done in the past, it'll be
electronically moving around the organisation. As I said it's a
more convenient 'one stop' shop solution. In terms of the Water
Service Coordinators, we think there is an opportunity for them
in terms of increased business. They will be able to provide a more
complete service to their customers they would be having direct
electronic access to some of Sydney Water's information systems.
I'm talking specifically about our geographical information 'Hydra'.
They will be able to monitor the progress of their works so they
actually just go into the web, the customer rings up says where
the hell is it up to, they just log in, look up the case number
and it'll tell them exactly what steps they're up to and if they're
not happy with that well they make enquiries about how to speed
it up or what the problem is. As I said before the big benefit to
the coordinator as well as to all the customers is that we're introducing
standardised process. It'll be actually set by an IT system in terms
of the different steps that have to happen.
Other benefits
to Sydney Water. We're more able to direct our expertise to where
its needed which is the technical assessment of applications; not
the photocopying of paper, of referral across the organisation,
the telephone calls the faxing, we can actually focus our expertise
onto the actual application and the technical requirements that
we want to put on to it. We'll then be able to provide more support
to the customer as well as the Water Servicing Coordinator and at
the end of the day we're going to get much better assets, records
and supply management.
The one benefit
that isn't up there is the benefit to everybody and I'm not sure
if Des Mooney talked about it this morning or Warwick Watkins will
talk about it later on, but the big benefit to everyone with this
system is that we're introducing a system that is actually going
to make electronic information about Sydney Water processes applications
and information electronically available to a variety of people.
It'll be sitting at a place that people can go to. We think it's
a very important step towards people like surveyors project managers
developers actually creating the information once having it available
electronically and then being able to share it and look at it.
One of the
key benefits of having access to Sydney Waters geographical information
system is that if you can get access to the system by being a water
servicing coordinator you'll also be able to look around in the
area to identify any other forms of activity for commercial reasons
you won't be able to interrogate the specifics of the application
but you'd be able to identify them as activity as occurring and
you'll also be able to identify who is managing that job. It could
be somebody you know or you could ring them up and say 'what are
you doing' and there could be a synergy between the two projects
so there are some opportunities for sharing a lot of information.
And that's
my speedy presentation, I'm happy to answer questions after the
next speaker. Thanks.
Barry Yardley
Thank you
Tom. Our next speaker is Ralph Miller. Ralph is a developer, Policy
& Process Manager at Sydney Water with responsibility for ensuring
that Sydney Water's policies and procedures are clear, equitable
and consistently applied. Ralph spent over 20 years in the Urban
Development area of Sydney Water assisting in facilitating the expansion
of services to meet Sydney's growing needs. Ralph's presentation
will focus on the servicing requirements for small lot developments
and the urban development policy review process. Thank you Ralph.
Ralph Miller
Thank you
Barry. I think I've drawn the short straw; afternoon tea awaits
you. In addressing my topic I'm going to make it fairly brief. I'm
going to address some initiatives being undertaken by Sydney Water
and you may have already picked up on a number of these already.
These will clarify and hopefully make it a bit easier for setting
requirements and meeting requirements of both small and large scale
developments.
In recent
years great efforts have been made in the public sector to not only
become more efficient and effective but also to deliver a better
standard of service. I might add there that a better standard of
service doesn't necessarily always mean cheaper. But it does mean
being consistent in how policies and procedures are applied to those
in the community who have to deal with public bodies such as Sydney
Water. We want to be not only consistent in application, but fair
and equitable.
This is perhaps
best demonstrated in our efforts that Sydney Water has made to work
with the suppliers of water and sewerage infrastructure. Historically
the '80s and '90s saw that design and construction work passed out
to the private sector to compliment this move there has been a move
to the national codes and the Sydney Water supplements, the design
and construction of these works. These codes will be refined over
time the national codes will expand, supplements will shrink. I
suppose what I'm trying to say here is that as there is greater
clarity in the codes it'll take out some of the second guessing
as to what Sydney Water's requirements actually are and makes servicing
developments easier.
At the same
time quite a few of you would be aware that we've had an initiative
in setting up a water infrastructure industry quality council where
we've had representatives from the project managers soon to be the
Water Servicing Coordinators that Tom has mentioned from designers,
testers and constructors. I suppose its true to say that in that
forum the discussions have at times been lively, at times very satisfying
as matters have progressed and at times somewhat frustrating, but
I suppose at all times its been fairly slow and steady progress
and industries making an input into the processes and procedures
within Sydney Water. At the same time our work manuals have been
greatly expanded and refined and we're making them much clearer.
Those work manuals there are instructions to suppliers, they are
much more comprehensive documents than they were a few years ago
so there is a great deal of clarity coming into what Sydney wants
for the servicing of development.
I'll cut this
down a little bit but Tom has already painted you a comprehensive
picture of our e-developer initiatives. One of these initiatives
will help clarify Sydney Water's requirements on the small scale
and indeed the large scale developments my topic today. As Tom has
indicated work will flow through that electronic process and as
the Sydney Water developer activities, and I was the person that
manages the process on our side and the Water Servicing Coordinator
pushes work through that process, both individuals will be able
to represent access certain relevant documents and these documents
will be the process manuals that I've mentioned and perhaps more
importantly given my topic today, the relevant policies and guidelines.
I quickly
mentioned a few of these, I'm not going to try and solve any problems
of specific individual developments here today but give you some
of the overriding things. Developer charges, and a number of you
out there in the audience will probably roll their eyes at this
particular stage, it's a huge cost on developers. We have produced
a set of guidelines actually as to how developer charges are created,
those guidelines will be posted on the Sydney Water Website and
it will be possible for a coordinator after a little homework to
quickly work out rule of thumb charges for most types of developments
- quickly and accurately. Indeed we're looking at a link with our
geographical data base and a calculator sitting behind that which
will make the calculations even easier still. It's available right
now internally, in fact it'll be posted on the updated version will
be posted on our internal web ready for Monday, and supplier and
general public access is being finalised now.
Moving on
very quickly, we do allow in some circumstances the bonding of works.
That document is finalised and that will be available in the public
arena. How we recover the cost of existing works after having a
policy in place since the early '60s and where developers benefit
from existing works are charged certain charges, we've actually
written that up, formalised it and that's going to be in the public
arena.
The dealing
for your servicing requirements for dual occupancy and other two
dwelling development there is a policy document that just recently
been revised and that will make the requirements clearer. One example
for unsubdivided dual occupancy, Sydney Water will allow a single
point of connection to its water main, with one 20 millimetre water
meter or you may have a T and two meters and a single point of connection
to your sewer main. With the water service as a T and two meters,
you might have got an argument with some of the Sydney Water officers
whether that would have been permitted in recent months; not from
now on we've clarified it, having a T and 2 meters allows a landlord
tenant relationship on an unsubdivided dual occupancy to apportion
usage charges under the Residential Tenancies Act. So we're trying
to put things clearer and make them a little bit easier for the
public.
I'll probably
finish up on this particular one. Tom, as his homework at the moment,
has a document that I prepared on connections and it's a fairly
comprehensive document and it actually covers our connection requirements
it picks up from those very, very broad general requirements covered
by the National Codes and the Sydney Water supplements. It looks
at the funding requirements who pays what, which pockets the dollars
come out for the various types of work whether they're minimum size
or upsized works. It looks at the different property and development
types and your specific connection requirements so if you're doing
Strata Title or Stratum mixed development if you've got a residue
lot and more, it specifies what our requirements are for those particular
types of property development. And finally, it touches on a whole
range, not touches, it comprehensively covers the circumstances
that may affect connection requirements including those sub divisions
which are sometimes a little bit tricky, the subdivisions where
you don't have a direct frontage, the subdivisions where the existing
sewer is in a roadway and its been a fairly intensive debate within
Sydney Water as to what our requirements would be on that, subdivision
creating encroaching lines and subdivisions where you've got that
access or right of way in creating a number of lots down a fairly
skinny right of way or right of carriageway.
That we hope
to have approved within a few weeks. That also will be available
on the net and I could run through a few other policies here and
I've actually got some specific examples about some of the things
and over afternoon tea I'm happy to discuss some of these with you
on a one to one basis.
In conclusion,
whilst I haven't specifically addressed some of the specific issues,
what I've tried to do is demonstrate that Sydney Water is attempting
to put a whole lot of its processes and procedures in quite some
detail in the public forum so that you can access those documents
and particularly individuals like Water Service Coordinators where
it will be really their bread and butter to access those documents
and know them backwards and therefore once you know our requirements
its going to make the understanding of what our requirements are
and meeting them a hell of a lot easier.
So that's
the task that we've set and I think you'll agree that there's a
lot of information going in the public arena that in the past quite
frankly Sydney Water offices held them very closely to their chest.
Thank you very much.
Barry Yardley
Thank you
Ralph. We've got a few minutes for some questions.
Gordon Wren
Bernie, Gordon
Wren here, mate how are you. Could I make a few comments you mentioned
about the accreditation schemes on the engineers and planners, you
forgot the poor old surveyors. The PSOA have accredited civil guys,
two of those and two strata guys another 4-5 in the pipeline so
look out, don't just use the engineers, mate, because surveyors
are good too. And I think Steve Johnson would agree that the Strata
Certificates when you're running about 20 I think its about 20 registered
at this point in time so don't forget that either.
Barry Yardley
Any more questions,
okay Greg.
Greg Oxley
This is a
question to Tom. The e-developer process Tom. Is local government
aware of the format of the electronic lodgement that's required.
I understand that the development consent has to be either in a
PDF or Word.txt format and the accompanying plan needs to be in
AutoCad dwg format, would it not be better to have the plan in a
.tif type format because I understand from talking to some people
in local government that there is still a significant level of plans
that are presented to local government that are not prepared by
external consultants that are pretty roughly drawn and it might
be better to look at the autocad type lodgment at a later date in
the process.
Tom Jellibrand
Thanks Greg,
in terms of local government consents unfortunately they vary from
sometimes one page to hundreds of pages and there is no consistency
within local government in terms of how the document is produced,
some people do them in word files, some of them are actually produced
via mainframe systems and they're all embedded so deeply in that
that you can't transfer that consent in an electronic form easily.
So we've been looking at scanning in consents at the beginning and
those consents would be communicated to Sydney Water electronically
via the web as well. The problem with that is that when you scan
large documents it takes time, they're huge and it's very difficult
to manage. So we're actually still investigating how we're going
to get the Council consent into a form that can be communicated
that the Water Servicing Coordinator can communicate it to us and
that's a matter of watching this space, it might be that we'll only
be looking at a part of the consent. We've actually been talking
to Councils about their preparedness to give us the consents in
a nice easy word form and they're either not interested or they
can't do it. In terms of the actual plan generation, your observation
is correct, the quality of plans given to local government range
from at worst, on the back of an envelope all the way through to
professionally prepared survey accurate plans using Autocad. And
that's a real problem that variation. That's why I think, without
blowing the trumpet too loudly, the initiative by Sydney Water is
actually going to introduce some rigor into the system because ultimately
those plans will have to be survey accurate and they're going to
have to be prepared according to our needs and hopefully because
most of those plans will ultimately be with Sydney Water we can
dictate how they're prepared at the beginning so the customers will
realise they will need proper plans drawn up especially for subdivision
so they go straight to that place at the beginning of the process.
It's prepared once and its then available for a variety of people
to use, it'll come through to Sydney Water as part of the application
and if that subdivision doesn't change in any way that will actually
be the plan that's registered LPI. So we're talking closely with
LPI about how we can share information how we can give each other
information early on in the process it'll help with registration
as well as assessment. You asked the question as well the software
we were going to use to do the actual plan work, the way the system
works is the Water Servicing Coordinator will actually access our
geographical information system via the web and grab the piece of
the cadastre that the customer or servicing coordinator is interested
in and that will be in a form that can be used by a variety of software
systems so it can be populated by Autocad or other software to do
the drawing. In terms of the actual hydraulic design that can only
be submitted to us in Autocad in the latest version.
Barry Yardley
Okay time
for one more question.
Martin Burke, Lovegrove Oxley
Tom, thank
you mate. Did you say that Water Servicing Coordinators would be
the only point of contact in relation to technical services.
Tom Jellibrand
My charter
for my presentation was to be quick so I cut a few sort of important
details out. We're going to get the Water Servicing Coordinators,
they're going to be selected initially from our group of Project
Managers and that arrangement might last for about a year or more
then we're going to open it up and we're actually going to say well
who wants to do this role of Water Servicing Coordinator and it
opens up that role to people like Bernie and other companies like
that so the certifiers could start considering expanding their role
and that's when you really get the 'one stop' shop. I talked about
taking a step towards a 'one stop' shop I think if certifiers were
to do the work that I'm foreshadowing well then truly the customer
only needs to go to one place.
The actual
role of a Water Servicing Coordinator, its mainly in that section
73 area but they will be able to lodge all applications that Sydney
Water Urban Development currently gets but on day one customers
will still be able to go to a Sydney Water counter if they choose
and say Council says I need a certificate or I need to get this
technical service, I want to deal with you Sydney Water because
there is still a mistrust out there especially Mums and Dads and
people of non-English speaking backgrounds they'd rather go with
government than perhaps a private body. So on day one, customers
will still be able to go to a Sydney Water counter and we'll have
the means in place to accept their application over the counter
and get it rolling, but that's a really wasteful exercise because
once we've told them what our requirements are they'll actually
have to go back to Water Servicing Coordinator anyway if it involves
some form of construction. But the push once the system has been
rolled out is to migrate as many customers to Water Servicing Coordinators
as possible. So the target I've set for our business is to have
100% of customers going to Water Servicing Coordinators after 12
months of the system going live. Thanks mate.
Barry Yardley
Okay, thank
you. We've been fortunate in having good quality presenters delivering
important and relevant information. We live in a dynamic environment
and where we have many challenges and hosts of solutions and our
four presenters here for this session they are surely people who
can help us with solutions to these challenges. I imagine for a
few minutes prior to them having their coffee they don't mind having
a one to one down the front here, be quick. So if we'd like to break
for a coffee break outside, thank you
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