Sophie Barton: Hi, welcome back to the Transform podcast from GHD. My name is Sophie Barton. I am a Risk and Assurance Advisor in the Melbourne team also am the co-chair of the Australian Water Association Young Water Professionals in Victoria. the Connected by Water Conference hosted by the AWA ⁓ was in February in Perth this year. And following on from that conference, I had the pleasure of speaking with two of our senior technical leaders ⁓ at ⁓
Tash Wilson: You've been listening to Transform by GHD. Big ideas, real impact.
Sophie Barton: In thinking about having a different mindset with water, what does this mean to you in practice?
Petja Albrecht: So I suppose in a West Australian context, the things we're starting to explore is no longer just wasting the water that's being taken. So I suppose in a mining context, for instance, water that's dewatered from a mine to access a resource has to be returned to the ground rather than discharged to a creek to avoid the social and environmental impacts. So Sophie, one of the recent examples we've actually seen here in Western Australia is where we've seen public utilities and industry work together to make things more economic. So Rio Tinto and the local water utility here, the Water Corporation, are working together to develop a desalination plant to serve the northwestern coast of Western Australia. So they are building a desalination plant.
Tash Wilson: Welcome to Transform, tomorrow's thinking today. Real conversations on the innovation shaping businesses and our society.
Sophie Barton: That's a really fascinating takeaway. Petra Albrecht and Daniel Visser, and we were able to reflect on what they took away from that discussion and those conversations happening within the conference and what's next. So Petia, thank you so much for joining today. You've just been to Connected by Water in Perth what were the conversations that were sticking out to you and what sort of were spilling out into morning teas and lunches between sessions?
Petja Albrecht: The other thing we're seeing is there's a greater integration with stakeholders. you might have organizations working together. So we wasting water. You have industries talking to one another, planning together, ⁓ and focusing on avoiding waste in the first There's been some media announcements, I believe it's in the area of $600 million. So that's obviously a large saving to both industry and the community. So really getting some benefits for both sides.
Sophie Barton: Sounds like a really great project. Looking forward to hearing more about that.
Petja Albrecht: Sophie, it's really good to meet you. I was actually lucky enough to chair one of the sessions. think to your question, I think the thing that really stood out to me was really this overall theme of taking a wider view of water and ⁓ considering, the more broader context of water and how it fits community.
Sophie Barton: Yeah, fantastic. then coming out of Connected by Water, ⁓ what are you to get back into the office to support clients with? are you taking back with you to your clients? That's really fascinating.
Petja Albrecht: place.
Sophie Barton: Yeah, great points there. Do you have any thoughts on that, Daniel?
Petja Albrecht: So I've been thinking about this. there's a project we're working on that's where a customer has a business critical water project. their challenge really is ⁓ multifaceted. It the holistic water challenges from both a social and an economic problem to their whole business.
Sophie Barton: Do you have anything to add on that Daniel?
Petja Albrecht: really deeply considering how it fits into environment and thinking about, deeply treating water as a resource.
Daniel Visser: would say that probably the main thing that's really coming across is I guess the whole intent of the conference becoming connected.
Petja Albrecht: So what I'm really excited about is the fact that we need to bring all parts of our organization together from science, economics and social to make it work and then to develop an engineering solution that's going to solve their problems. ⁓ And I think this is ⁓ this bringing together all parts of our is where we get the outcomes.
Daniel Visser: And I think really the main thing that was coming in the conversations was ⁓ that need to increase the collaboration between the people to make that ⁓ everybody is on the same page.
Petja Albrecht: this is the same thing that the whole water industry needs, that we really need to get everyone to the same table and thinking about things holistically. And that's when we're going to get the greatest
Daniel Visser: Yeah. So when it comes to different mindset, I think really what we need be thinking about there is that ⁓ everybody approaches the story from a different background. ⁓ I guess you say different ⁓ water worldview, if like. ⁓ And there's four views that I think of. that's...
Sophie Barton: So a final question for you, at the next Connected by Water, wherever that may be, what are you hoping you'll be able to share back to the water industry?
Daniel Visser: water for life, for prosperity, water for the environment and then water for country and each one of those ⁓ quite different and it changes the way that you approach what you do with water. water life is all about water for mums and dads and kids who need to drink and to flush their toilets so on and so forth. So it's our traditional water sector
Petja Albrecht: I would love to say that we've worked together with industry, with multiple parties working together to solve water problems. I think if we can have multiple industrial customers working together to work on complex problems and addressing our water challenges regionally, I think that would be fantastic to see. We're already working cross disciplines to achieve better outcomes. Now, if we can work
Sophie Barton: so Given Connected by Water is ⁓ Australia-wide what were you really proud about sharing from a Western Australian stance ⁓ with broader industry?
Daniel Visser: of water and management ⁓ wastewater. for is where we think about the industrial sector, ⁓ things like
Petja Albrecht: think something Western Australia can be really proud of is how adaptable we've been in terms of water management. So Western Australia has faced diminishing rainfall since the 1970s. So we've been adapting our water management for a long time. we've really worked to shift ourselves from a reliance on surface water in the 1970s. And at first that became a reliance on using groundwater as our main resource. Now focus became with multiple providers so we develop more holistic solutions in broader areas, I think that would be a huge success.
Daniel Visser: There is the incoming interest in water for data centers, for green energy and so on And we've got water environment and so making sure there's water in wetlands to keep the flora and the fauna healthy and alive.
Sophie Barton: I look forward to seeing all you and your team achieve. Petia, thank you so much for joining us.
Petja Albrecht: how we used groundwater. That now is under stress. a lot of social pressure to see that we can move away from that. Then on the other part, our industry is expanding and we're exploring new industries such as green steel, hydrogen is a potential industry explore, and that's introducing desalination. ⁓
Daniel Visser: And then that last one, water for country. Now I am by no means the expert on this aspect, but we think here about the Indigenous perspective with regards to water and respecting the values that these people bring to the discussion.
Petja Albrecht: We're thinking about geographically how our industry expands, and that means relocating our industries towards the coast. really, both geographically, how we're locating our industry, we're able to respond to that because we've got that real, I suppose, ability to change and pivot. ⁓ we're ready for that, and we've been doing really well. And I think... A lot of other places can learn from that and see that you can still be an economic powerhouse and change and it doesn't need to be a problem.
Sophie Barton: Following on from that, you touched a lot on adaptability. So as climate uncertainty grows and we have demands increasing from a range of industries, can we take more of a holistic view to managing those trade-offs between affordability, resilience and community needs? Thank you for listening into Transform podcast by DHT. We hope you got something out of the conversation with Daniel and Petya that went on at Connected by Water this year.
Daniel Visser: I think on this one, it really does come down to having the robust discussions across the various stakeholders, understanding really what everybody brings to the table and what their needs are and trying to bring them together in one place. it doesn't work if we simply just approach these sorts of discussions just from a traditional water perspective. We need bring in the industrial players, to bring in the members of the community, the Indigenous and traditional landowners, And we need make sure that gets their say. When it comes to the uncertainties, really think that we to show little bit of initiative, if you like. I guess when it the future, the only that is certain is that it is uncertain. So we need to set up a whole range of different possibilities and try our best to lay out what might occur, thinking both ⁓ terms of things that are ⁓ probable, but also thinking about scenarios that may not eventuate and working through those different ⁓ possibilities, our and wastewater supply infrastructure to account for those future possibilities that might come into play. but allowing ourselves the opportunity to switch between these plans the future starts to become more certain.
Sophie Barton: So Daniel, you mentioned planning for a range of potential futures. actually presented on maps, so modeled adaptive pathways planning ⁓ a new way of planning for industrial water. For who aren't planners, what is this in simple terms?
Daniel Visser: So planning has focused on a single future outcome. That might be a certain water volume that you need by a certain date, for instance. what we've realised time ⁓ is planning for a single future is a flawed strategy because we can't predict the future. Probably the best example that shows that is the COVID pandemic. We could not predict that that was ⁓ about happen, but we managed to work our way through the situation when it did. actually evolve. what adaptive pathways planning attempts to do is plan for multiple futures, We to set up a series of ⁓ solutions that might align with ⁓ range of scenarios and then have a series of trigger points and along the journey that allows us to step between those pathways or depending on what is unfolding. to have that opportunity to change our mind along the way. That then brings me to the map approach. The traditional approach to adaptive pathways planning has been somewhat in it's more of a qualitative approach rather than quantitative ⁓ approach. That addition the fact that we're dealing with a future that is ⁓ completely uncertain and it comes to industrial areas ⁓ we don't know much water we need ⁓ and we don't when it will be needed. We also then don't know the value of the options we're actually putting on the table. So what the map approach done is combined ⁓ the approach of adaptive pathways planning together with what you be familiar with, which is multi-criteria analysis and also stochastic and real analysis ⁓ bring all of those to achieve a new framework. towards adaptive pathways planning. analysis, for listeners who may not be aware of that term, ⁓ that is basically the study of probability and And ⁓ one the techniques that's used there ⁓ is Monte Carlo analysis. And basically what we're doing is to simulate using data science what the water demand might look like and that might be required based on series of ⁓ things that know, feeding that some to predict some numbers we know. So then going on to the real option analysis bit, this is about is the that we have on the table and applying some tools that are borrowed from the investment planning sector and assessing the benefits of the building in uncertainty that we into the equation. It's quite a complex concept, so time does not permit me to go into detail, suffice to say that bringing these methods allows us to quantify our planning a little bit more than what we would otherwise do and gives a bit more confidence in the outcomes. ⁓ As I alluded to earlier, think the main thing that we need to be doing is to build those connections between the various different parties who are involved with water. And this I think is one of the areas where GHD has something to bring to the table. So we're very involved with municipal clients, but we're ⁓ quite involved others ⁓ who have requirements such as the industry and other industrial parties. That in addition to still others who get with water such as the agriculture sector, something that we don't tend to actually hear too much about, but significant requirements for water. And I really what I'm keen actually see happen is for each of these parties to talk more to each other. And that's something that I see us being able to facilitate, helping to make connections and to build those discussions.
Sophie Barton: Thank you so much, Daniel.
Daniel Visser: No worries.
Sophie Barton: Hi, Daniel, nice to be chatting with you today.
Daniel Visser: Well, thanks for that Sophie. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat and keen to see we can share today.
Sophie Barton: Looking forward to it.
Tash Wilson: You've been listening to Transform by GHD. Big ideas, real impact.
Sophie Barton: In thinking about having a different mindset with water, what does this mean to you in practice?
Petja Albrecht: So I suppose in a West Australian context, the things we're starting to explore is no longer just wasting the water that's being taken. So I suppose in a mining context, for instance, water that's dewatered from a mine to access a resource has to be returned to the ground rather than discharged to a creek to avoid the social and environmental impacts. So Sophie, one of the recent examples we've actually seen here in Western Australia is where we've seen public utilities and industry work together to make things more economic. So Rio Tinto and the local water utility here, the Water Corporation, are working together to develop a desalination plant to serve the northwestern coast of Western Australia. So they are building a desalination plant.
Tash Wilson: Welcome to Transform, tomorrow's thinking today. Real conversations on the innovation shaping businesses and our society.
Sophie Barton: That's a really fascinating takeaway. Petra Albrecht and Daniel Visser, and we were able to reflect on what they took away from that discussion and those conversations happening within the conference and what's next. So Petia, thank you so much for joining today. You've just been to Connected by Water in Perth what were the conversations that were sticking out to you and what sort of were spilling out into morning teas and lunches between sessions?
Petja Albrecht: The other thing we're seeing is there's a greater integration with stakeholders. you might have organizations working together. So we wasting water. You have industries talking to one another, planning together, ⁓ and focusing on avoiding waste in the first There's been some media announcements, I believe it's in the area of $600 million. So that's obviously a large saving to both industry and the community. So really getting some benefits for both sides.
Sophie Barton: Sounds like a really great project. Looking forward to hearing more about that.
Petja Albrecht: Sophie, it's really good to meet you. I was actually lucky enough to chair one of the sessions. think to your question, I think the thing that really stood out to me was really this overall theme of taking a wider view of water and ⁓ considering, the more broader context of water and how it fits community.
Sophie Barton: Yeah, fantastic. then coming out of Connected by Water, ⁓ what are you to get back into the office to support clients with? are you taking back with you to your clients? That's really fascinating.
Petja Albrecht: place.
Sophie Barton: Yeah, great points there. Do you have any thoughts on that, Daniel?
Petja Albrecht: So I've been thinking about this. there's a project we're working on that's where a customer has a business critical water project. their challenge really is ⁓ multifaceted. It the holistic water challenges from both a social and an economic problem to their whole business.
Sophie Barton: Do you have anything to add on that Daniel?
Petja Albrecht: really deeply considering how it fits into environment and thinking about, deeply treating water as a resource.
Daniel Visser: would say that probably the main thing that's really coming across is I guess the whole intent of the conference becoming connected.
Petja Albrecht: So what I'm really excited about is the fact that we need to bring all parts of our organization together from science, economics and social to make it work and then to develop an engineering solution that's going to solve their problems. ⁓ And I think this is ⁓ this bringing together all parts of our is where we get the outcomes.
Daniel Visser: And I think really the main thing that was coming in the conversations was ⁓ that need to increase the collaboration between the people to make that ⁓ everybody is on the same page.
Petja Albrecht: this is the same thing that the whole water industry needs, that we really need to get everyone to the same table and thinking about things holistically. And that's when we're going to get the greatest
Daniel Visser: Yeah. So when it comes to different mindset, I think really what we need be thinking about there is that ⁓ everybody approaches the story from a different background. ⁓ I guess you say different ⁓ water worldview, if like. ⁓ And there's four views that I think of. that's...
Sophie Barton: So a final question for you, at the next Connected by Water, wherever that may be, what are you hoping you'll be able to share back to the water industry?
Daniel Visser: water for life, for prosperity, water for the environment and then water for country and each one of those ⁓ quite different and it changes the way that you approach what you do with water. water life is all about water for mums and dads and kids who need to drink and to flush their toilets so on and so forth. So it's our traditional water sector
Petja Albrecht: I would love to say that we've worked together with industry, with multiple parties working together to solve water problems. I think if we can have multiple industrial customers working together to work on complex problems and addressing our water challenges regionally, I think that would be fantastic to see. We're already working cross disciplines to achieve better outcomes. Now, if we can work
Sophie Barton: so Given Connected by Water is ⁓ Australia-wide what were you really proud about sharing from a Western Australian stance ⁓ with broader industry?
Daniel Visser: of water and management ⁓ wastewater. for is where we think about the industrial sector, ⁓ things like
Petja Albrecht: think something Western Australia can be really proud of is how adaptable we've been in terms of water management. So Western Australia has faced diminishing rainfall since the 1970s. So we've been adapting our water management for a long time. we've really worked to shift ourselves from a reliance on surface water in the 1970s. And at first that became a reliance on using groundwater as our main resource. Now focus became with multiple providers so we develop more holistic solutions in broader areas, I think that would be a huge success.
Daniel Visser: There is the incoming interest in water for data centers, for green energy and so on And we've got water environment and so making sure there's water in wetlands to keep the flora and the fauna healthy and alive.
Sophie Barton: I look forward to seeing all you and your team achieve. Petia, thank you so much for joining us.
Petja Albrecht: how we used groundwater. That now is under stress. a lot of social pressure to see that we can move away from that. Then on the other part, our industry is expanding and we're exploring new industries such as green steel, hydrogen is a potential industry explore, and that's introducing desalination. ⁓
Daniel Visser: And then that last one, water for country. Now I am by no means the expert on this aspect, but we think here about the Indigenous perspective with regards to water and respecting the values that these people bring to the discussion.
Petja Albrecht: We're thinking about geographically how our industry expands, and that means relocating our industries towards the coast. really, both geographically, how we're locating our industry, we're able to respond to that because we've got that real, I suppose, ability to change and pivot. ⁓ we're ready for that, and we've been doing really well. And I think... A lot of other places can learn from that and see that you can still be an economic powerhouse and change and it doesn't need to be a problem.
Sophie Barton: Following on from that, you touched a lot on adaptability. So as climate uncertainty grows and we have demands increasing from a range of industries, can we take more of a holistic view to managing those trade-offs between affordability, resilience and community needs? Thank you for listening into Transform podcast by DHT. We hope you got something out of the conversation with Daniel and Petya that went on at Connected by Water this year.
Daniel Visser: I think on this one, it really does come down to having the robust discussions across the various stakeholders, understanding really what everybody brings to the table and what their needs are and trying to bring them together in one place. it doesn't work if we simply just approach these sorts of discussions just from a traditional water perspective. We need bring in the industrial players, to bring in the members of the community, the Indigenous and traditional landowners, And we need make sure that gets their say. When it comes to the uncertainties, really think that we to show little bit of initiative, if you like. I guess when it the future, the only that is certain is that it is uncertain. So we need to set up a whole range of different possibilities and try our best to lay out what might occur, thinking both ⁓ terms of things that are ⁓ probable, but also thinking about scenarios that may not eventuate and working through those different ⁓ possibilities, our and wastewater supply infrastructure to account for those future possibilities that might come into play. but allowing ourselves the opportunity to switch between these plans the future starts to become more certain.
Sophie Barton: So Daniel, you mentioned planning for a range of potential futures. actually presented on maps, so modeled adaptive pathways planning ⁓ a new way of planning for industrial water. For who aren't planners, what is this in simple terms?
Daniel Visser: So planning has focused on a single future outcome. That might be a certain water volume that you need by a certain date, for instance. what we've realised time ⁓ is planning for a single future is a flawed strategy because we can't predict the future. Probably the best example that shows that is the COVID pandemic. We could not predict that that was ⁓ about happen, but we managed to work our way through the situation when it did. actually evolve. what adaptive pathways planning attempts to do is plan for multiple futures, We to set up a series of ⁓ solutions that might align with ⁓ range of scenarios and then have a series of trigger points and along the journey that allows us to step between those pathways or depending on what is unfolding. to have that opportunity to change our mind along the way. That then brings me to the map approach. The traditional approach to adaptive pathways planning has been somewhat in it's more of a qualitative approach rather than quantitative ⁓ approach. That addition the fact that we're dealing with a future that is ⁓ completely uncertain and it comes to industrial areas ⁓ we don't know much water we need ⁓ and we don't when it will be needed. We also then don't know the value of the options we're actually putting on the table. So what the map approach done is combined ⁓ the approach of adaptive pathways planning together with what you be familiar with, which is multi-criteria analysis and also stochastic and real analysis ⁓ bring all of those to achieve a new framework. towards adaptive pathways planning. analysis, for listeners who may not be aware of that term, ⁓ that is basically the study of probability and And ⁓ one the techniques that's used there ⁓ is Monte Carlo analysis. And basically what we're doing is to simulate using data science what the water demand might look like and that might be required based on series of ⁓ things that know, feeding that some to predict some numbers we know. So then going on to the real option analysis bit, this is about is the that we have on the table and applying some tools that are borrowed from the investment planning sector and assessing the benefits of the building in uncertainty that we into the equation. It's quite a complex concept, so time does not permit me to go into detail, suffice to say that bringing these methods allows us to quantify our planning a little bit more than what we would otherwise do and gives a bit more confidence in the outcomes. ⁓ As I alluded to earlier, think the main thing that we need to be doing is to build those connections between the various different parties who are involved with water. And this I think is one of the areas where GHD has something to bring to the table. So we're very involved with municipal clients, but we're ⁓ quite involved others ⁓ who have requirements such as the industry and other industrial parties. That in addition to still others who get with water such as the agriculture sector, something that we don't tend to actually hear too much about, but significant requirements for water. And I really what I'm keen actually see happen is for each of these parties to talk more to each other. And that's something that I see us being able to facilitate, helping to make connections and to build those discussions.
Sophie Barton: Thank you so much, Daniel.
Daniel Visser: No worries.
Sophie Barton: Hi, Daniel, nice to be chatting with you today.
Daniel Visser: Well, thanks for that Sophie. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat and keen to see we can share today.
Sophie Barton: Looking forward to it.
