Infrastructure Planning Reform
The article last week about the sewer servicing issues in Austral generated a lot of engagement in my network. It’s an issue that is front and centre for my business. We do a lot of work for all Local and State Government in infrastructure sequencing and planning, but we also perform civil engineering design and project management for private sector clients. We have a great breadth of experience in the housing supply process from pre rezoning all the way through construction.
As far as Austral goes, I think it is fair to say that the horse has bolted. There will be a pause in development. It is now imperative that the State Government and Sydney Water now work together to minimise this.
Once this has been done the focus needs to turn to how to prevent this from happening again. It’s easy to point the finger at Sydney Water and heap blame on them, but it isn’t that simple. All of the stakeholders need to improve what they do and how they collaborate.
The Austral situation sits at one end of the spectrum, while the Menangle Sewer Pumping Station (and over 2km of rising main) sits at the other. Constructed in 2017 based on apparent developer driven demand that never materialized, it remains in the ground with no connections today.
As a consultant I obviously can’t give away all of the magic, but this is definitely a solvable situation. There’s always an answer, and here are a few things that are needed.
Be Outcomes Focused, but First Define the Outcome
It’s hard to be outcomes focused if you can’t clearly define the outcome you want. I don't believe that this has been clearly defined by Government. I have some thoughts on the metrics and details of this, but at a high level this should be focused on maintaining a defined and measurable pipeline of housing and employment supply based on population forecasts (top-down) and development data (bottom-up).
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Maintain Both a Housing & Employment Pipeline
For the past 3 to 5 years almost all of the focus across government agencies, utility authorities and relevant Councils has been on the Western Sydney Aerotropolis. Their resources (staff and capex) have been focused on the biggest project in Australia, but I believe this has been at the expense of the residential pipeline which has dried up. Having defined the outcomes we need, we must monitor both housing and jobs with equal importance.
Streamline Sydney Water Delivery Processes
The time taken from rezoning to delivering the first house on the ground is much less than the time it takes for Sydney Water to plan, design, gain funding and construct infrastructure. Again, they can definitely do better, but they are obliged to operate in a very slow and cumbersome system.
Previous studies that I have done places the time to deliver the first stage of housing at approximately 2 years in single developer master planned communities and around 4 years in multiple developer, fragmented area. This means that Sydney Water either need to start these processes earlier, or change the framework they operate in to reduce the time it takes to get projects on the ground. The other obvious change is the “efficient and prudent” IPART requirement (this effectively hamstrings Sydney Water from forward funding growth). We need to find a way to fund growth infrastructure ahead of demand (noting that DSPs have been put back on the table with the recent Infrastructure Contributions reform package). They can definitely part of this equation.
Implement a Collective Forecast that is Constantly Updated
Forecasting needs to be a collective effort between State Government (population forecasting, rezoning pipeline), Sydney Water (connections history can be used to help forecast the future) and the development industry (by providing development staging forecasts for their sites). Historically, this has been done from time to time in isolation by authorities or government, or in an Urban Development Program (UDP) pilot, etc. But it needs to be a consistent, collective effort that is kept “live” with regular updates. Having an agreed baseline of supply across industry, utilities and government is surely the foundation of the whole process, but we still haven’t managed to get there.
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Along with the above, there are numerous other initiatives that could be implemented to provide a more robust and collaborative approach to infrastructure planning and we can help bring them to fruition, but nothing will be achieved unless industry, government and utility authorities work together.?
Director at Vantage Property
2 年Excellent observations Chris. The funding framework for Sydney Water needs to change to allow consideration to be given to the economic development enabled by sewer infrastructure. The current framework only considers Sydney Water’s business model, which constrains timely sewer development in fragmented greenfield development. The entire objective of Western Sydney Airport is to created jobs in the western suburbs. It’s also worth noting that diversion of Sydney Water funds and resources to Western Sydney Airport will come at a massive cost to housing development jobs in Austral.
Public Policy and Corporate Affairs
2 年Great article Chris. As you know, improving the delivery of enabling infrastructure is a key priority for the UDIA. Hopefully, we will see government progress in this space in the next few months.
director I arc traffic + transport
2 年Having recently been involved with a new development required to adhere to the new WSD requirements in the middle of hundreds and hundreds who were not…unforgivable.
Program Manager - DC Deployment and Services at AWS
2 年An interesting article with good insight and initiatives which are doable!
Senior Estimator at D&D GROUP (NSW) Pty Ltd
2 年Many years ago, Sydney Water (MWS&DB) would have the carrier mains in place prior to developments proceeding. That does not always happen these days. I remember being told the story of a developer in the 1970's, who would have a drink at a pub near the MWS&DB head Office in Bathurst Street Sydney knowing that the survey teams would be having a drink there of a Friday afternoon. He would seek out and get friendly with the surveyors and get chatting asking "where have you been working today?" They would join in the conversation and unknowingly, the developer would know where the new release areas were going to be from the conversations on where the survey works were. I can never remember a problem from my near 50 years in the industry of there not being a sewer connection available for a development such as we have today. Maybe the development speed is out pacing supply?