Building long-term trust through short- term flexibility Emergency response A plane catches fire after an apparent bird strike.¹ A spiraling wastewater debacle in a river
slicing through a rapidly developing region spurs community protests.² A movie starring
Brad Pitt abandons a planned shoot.³ Dusk Mains Technical Lead - Hydrogeology, GHD
Jose Romero Technical Director, Marine & Aquatic Science, GHD
T
hat’s what we faced when called on to respond rapidly to a worsening situation in New Zealand’s Queenstown. The risk from birds in a nearby pond created from improper wastewater overflows led our client, the local
The two incidents underscore the need for consulting companies to be agile and pragmatic in responding to the complexities of environmental crises in real time. And they reinforce the importance of being vigilant about tailoring modeling tools so that governments and organisations can confidently turn to them for decision- making support when time is of the essence. Incident response capabilities are well-established in sectors such as oil and gas, aviation and natural disasters. But in civil infrastructure, including water systems, they are less mature. Solutions for sewage or chemical issues are typically developed over months rather than days.
territorial authority, to act to find a solution to the crisis. The local regulatory body gave 20 working days to submit a permit application. Just a month earlier, a different team in Australia’s Northern Territory had mere days to respond to an urgent request by the Western Australia (WA) Agriculture Department to use its chemicals-detecting model to recommend actions to tackle a pesticide contamination event in the Keep River.
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