Jacobs Group (Australia) Pty Limited
Floor 11, 452 Flinders Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
PO Box 312, Flinders Lane
Melbourne VIC 8009 Australia
T +61 3 8668 3000
F +61 3 8668 3001
www.jacobs.com
Mr David Miles AM,
Review Leader,
Cooperative Research Centre Programme
Review
Department of Industry
crc.review@industry.gov.au
11 November 2014
Dear Mr Miles
Submission to the Miles Review
Jacobs Australia (formerly known as Sinclair Knight Merz in Australia) has been involved in the
Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program for over 20 years.
Jacobs is a 70,000 person global consulting firm with over 5,000 employees in Australia that
service a wide range of industry sectors/clients (e.g. Urban and Rural water utilities, Government
Agencies at both State and Federal levels, Mining, Oil and Gas, Infrastructure, Building, Power
and Industrial).
Over the last 20 plus years, our organisation has been involved in the following CRC’s:
1)
Catchment Hydrology
2)
Freshwater Ecology
3)
eWater
4)
Water Sensitive Cities (current)
5)
Spatial Innovation (current)
This involvement in the CRC program has provided significant benefits to Jacobs Australia
including:

A collaborative forum in which to explore new solutions to our client’s business problems.

The ability to influence and inform the R&D program to ensure that it matches both ours and
our client’s needs.

An opportunity for ongoing staff development through their participation in CRC projects and
access to postgraduate students who have brought new skills to our organisation (e.g. a
recent head count revealed that 28 current or former Jacobs employees participated in the
Catchment Hydrology, Freshwater Ecology and eWater CRCs).

The ability to innovate by having access to the latest R&D which is a significant strategic
advantage in a competitive global landscape.
Jacobs Group (Australia) Pty Limited ABN 37 001 024 095
Jacobs® is a trademark of Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.
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Submission to the Miles Review
11 November 2014
Some recent success stories using R&D that has been commercialised through the CRC program
includes:
1)
Application of eWater Source models in New Zealand to address the water and nutrient
allocation process for the Horticulture and Dairy Industries in line with the governments
“Growth Within Limits” policy (see project highlight below).
Having access to water and nutrients ensures that agribusiness can securely invest hundreds
of millions of dollars in new production capacity (dams, irrigation systems, factories etc) which
will have significant long terms benefits for the New Zealand economy.
In addition, Jacobs have forecast > $10 million in fees over the next 5 years as we develop
and apply Source models for the next group of catchments. (Note: In Australia, access to
water and nutrients is also very topical given the push to build more dams for irrigation in
“Northern Australia”, Tasmania etc.)
2)
Jacobs was engaged by Sydney Water to undertake the Hawkesbury-Nepean Water Quality
Modelling Project to inform Sydney Water of the changes in water quality and ecology from a
range of different scenarios (e.g. upgrade of wastewater treatment plants, increased
environmental flows etc (see project highlight below).
As these case studies demonstrate, they are not trivial problems and the decisions that will be
taken both today and into the future will have significant implications for infrastructure investment
and for balancing the highest economic, social and environmental outcomes.
Finally, there are numerous other examples where our participation in the CRC program has
benefited our business through the application of applied R&D to our clients business needs. This
is why we continue to be a part of the CRC program through our current involvement in the CRC
for Water Sensitive Cities (with the shifting emphasis to Sustainable Cities) and the CRC for
Spatial Innovation.
Yours sincerely
Dr Rowan Barling
Business Development Leader
Government Environmental Agencies
+61 422008396
rowan.barling@jacobs.com
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Submission to the Miles Review
11 November 2014
eWater SOURCE project in New Zealand
Jacobs (formerly SKM) have been involved in several recent catchment modelling projects in New
Zealand. We have found that there is an appetite for catchment and water management software
in New Zealand that is sufficiently flexible to model different catchments with different
management arrangements for the land and water system but also that provides consistency and
repeatability of outcomes and that closes the mass balance for both water and nutrients in the
catchment. Of course, Source is the software that does that - in a way that most other software
platforms don't.
Tuki Tuki River Catchment Model - Assessment of Impacts of Proposed Plan Change 6
Horticulture New Zealand engaged Jacobs to undertake a hydrological study in the Tukituki
catchment, assessing the impact on the horticulture industries water security and nutrient
allocation limits resulting from the proposed Plan Change 6 (PC6) policy amendments to the
Hawke’s Bay Regional Councils (HBRC) Resource Management Plan.
Previous hydrological modelling of the Tukituki catchment for the purpose of deriving PC6 policies
were based on an annual water quality model (TRIM) developed as a research tool by the
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. The TRIM model was not available to
Horticulture New Zealand to undertake independent hydrological modelling and included a
number of functional limitations that were restrictive. As a result, SKM adopted a new modelling
framework that enabled:





Seasonal changes in hydrology and water quality (ie, operates at a daily time step)
Event surface water runoff and resulting nutrient loads
Surface water-groundwater interactions
Implementation of complex water sharing, demand restrictions and minimum flow limit
rules
An easy approach to scenario analysis of alternative management options
A spatial hydrological water quality model of the Tukituki catchment was constructed using the
eWater SOURCE modelling platform to capture seasonal changes in runoff and nutrient
generation from land and transport to surface and ground waters. The model incorporates surface
water-groundwater interactions, irrigation abstractions, land use, water and nutrient allocation
policies, and generates daily predictions for stream flow and in-stream nutrient concentrations.
The scenarios explored included:
 The impact on the availability (security) of water for irrigation, on low flows and on nutrient
concentrations associated with changes in minimum flow limits and seasonal allocation
policies controlling licensed diversion of water from surface or ground water sources;
 Changes in the flow regime and nutrient concentrations resulting from the construction of
a new major dam and irrigation supply scheme and an increase in irrigated land uses;
 Impact of PC6 policies and irrigation supply scheme on downstream irrigator demands
and resulting nutrient loads;
 Under the PC6 policies, the feasibility of allocating additional water reserves for root zone
protection during low flow periods for sensitive crops.
Jacobs worked closely with Horticulture New Zealand to provide a fit-for-purpose hydrological and
water quality modelling framework customised to meet their requirements in addressing their
concerns with the HBRC PC6 Resource Management Plan amendments and provided supporting
evidence and expert witness representation for the Board of Inquiry hearings on behalf of the
client.
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Submission to the Miles Review
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The modelling approach adopted provides additional value for investigating changes arising from
water resource management option at short timescales that are likely to have large impacts on
agricultural production and communities.
Client Benefits:
 Horticulture New Zealand were able to present a credible alternative catchment model at
to the Board of Inquiry that supported Horticulture NZ’s arguments that increasing
minimum flow requirements would provide minimal incremental benefit to water quality
whilst having significant financial and economic impacts on existing irrigators access to
water during dry periods.
 Horticulture New Zealand possesses a fit-for-purpose water quantity and quality model of
the Tukituki catchment that can be used for other water resource and catchment planning
studies in the future.
 Leveraging SKM’s experience in SOURCE customisation and relationships with eWater
to deliver a flexible, tailor-made solution for the client.
eWater SOURCE project for Sydney Water
Jacobs was engaged by Sydney Water to undertake the Hawkesbury-Nepean Water Quality
Modelling Project.
The Hawkesbury-Nepean River system supplies approximately 90% of the greater Sydney
region’s potable water supplies. The population of greater Sydney is expected to grow from
approximately 4.3 million in 2010 to 5.7 million in 2036 with demand for potable water anticipated
to increase by 10%. Much of the urban growth is planned to occur in the Northwest and
Southwest growth sectors of Sydney, which are in the South, Eastern and Cattai Creek subcatchments of the Hawkesbury-Nepean, which will result in changes in land-use and point/diffuse
sources of pollution. The catchment also supports a diverse array of industrial land-use and is a
focal point for tourism including ecotourism and recreational/commercial fisheries.
Jacobs created a flow and water quality model using eWater Source. The model contained
rainfall runoff models which were calibrated to gauges within the catchment and water quality
models which were parameterised outside the model and fed in. Overall there were 26 different
water quality constituents which were modelled, 11 of which were undertaken with the Source
model itself and the remainder were based on relationships with either outputs from the model or
the time of year.
Once the model was calibrated an initial set of scenarios was run for Sydney Water as the basis
for comparison with model runs in the future. The modelling system has the ability to simulate
hydrology, hydraulics and biogeochemical processes to examine the water quality benefits (or
impacts) resulting from the different scenarios over broad spatial and temporal scales in the
Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment which covers approximately 22,000 km 2.
To facilitate the modelling of many scenarios, multiple custom functions were created and used in
“batch” mode rather than having to individually select and update hundreds of parameters. Other
functionality which was developed included the ability to import and export information for specific
model runs. This functionality was important when the scenarios were needed to be run
consecutively, without having to manually update relevant parameters values. This enabled the
model to represent specific conditions that Sydney Water wished to model. In total, 100 scenarios
were run covering aspects such as changes in treatment plant operation, rehabilitation of
waterways, urban growth and changed environmental flow releases from the upstream reservoirs.
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