Bringing Melbourne's WSUD Asset Maintenance to the World

Dale recently attended the International Conference on Urban Drainage in Kuching Malaysia to learn from and share with WSUD, LID and SUDS researchers and professionals from around the world. The conference was well attended with many great presentations from top research centres and organisations on the latest research and practices in our field. Presentations ranged from new modelling tools and frameworks to experimental work on treatment performance to microwave links for measuring rainfall.

Dale presented the outcomes of our assessment of the condition of WSUD assets for the City of Port Phillip. The project has just won the Stormwater Victoria award for excellence in asset management with Dale running off to the airport to catch his plane to the conference as soon as the team had their picture taken with the award.

The project focussed on the topical problem of WSUD asset maintenance. A field assessment of maintenance needs was conducted with both field inspections and infiltration testing.

The study is driving change in how maintenance is planned with tasks categorized as planned corrective maintenance. The outcomes revealed most works required were corrective maintenance tasks related to design, construction and establishment issues rather than planned maintenance. This has significant implications for budgets and contracts for WSUD maintenance.

Many raingardens had poor plant condition or loss of plants or species due to a complex range of issues with inadequate soil moisture holding capacity in the filter media being most common. This is leading to a rethink about how we specify filter media and our team are providing input to the current FAWB guidelines review.

The outcomes of the study are allowing the City of Port Phillip to effectively renew and maintain its WSUD assets and ensure they achieve the vision of a water sensitive city.

The presentation generated many questions with strong interest in the findings from international speakers from the UK, USA and New Zealand.