Planning and Strategy

Master Planning and Growth Forecasting

Our master plans for water developments allow for growth while supporting high service levels to clients and the people in communities.

Master plans typically address both current capacity shortfalls and long-range demand projections, accounting for population growth, changes in industrial load, and tightening discharge standards. The output gives councils and operators a clear basis for capital investment decisions and consent strategy over a 20- to 30-year horizon.

Forecasting and Assessments

Our growth forecast and capacity assessments determine and anticipate future infrastructure needs.

These assessments draw on demographic data, land use planning inputs, and operational records to model how demand on your water or wastewater system is likely to change – and at what point your current infrastructure will reach its limits.

Sustainable Energy and Resource Recovery

Sustainability Advice

We advise on the feasibility of biogas and other sustainable fuels for power generation and heating, helping reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Biogas recovery from wastewater treatment is one of the more practical ways treatment plants can offset their energy costs. Our Christchurch Biosolids Drying Facility project demonstrated how renewable fuel sources can be integrated into a treatment facility's energy centre – in that case producing a nutrient-rich end product from what was previously considered a difficult waste material.

Opportunities for Reuse

We identify treated wastewater reuse opportunities, such as irrigation for agriculture, golf courses and commercial facilities.

Water recycling reduces demand on freshwater sources and can significantly lower operating costs for industries that consume large volumes of process water, reducing overall water consumption across the operation. Recent trends across manufacturing and food processing have been to minimise wastewater production at the source and, where that's not fully achievable, to treat and reuse as much of the wastewater stream as possible within the production process itself.

Systems Design and Optimisation

Treatment System Design and Optimisation

We design high performance water treatment systems, including recommendations down to the part level (pumps, filters, air blowers, etc.).

Our design work covers the full sequence from concept and process selection through to detailed design and part-level specification. Where your operations involve highly variable incoming water quality – as is common in food processing and dairy – we design systems with the flexibility to handle that variability without compromising discharge compliance.

Computer Simulation Service

Our simulations support day-to-day operation and training, with upgrade options to optimise your plant efficiency and performance.

Process simulations let operators test how a plant will respond to changes in load, seasonal variation, or process upsets – before those situations arise in practice. This reduces commissioning risk on new builds and gives existing plant operators a tested reference point for managing their facility day to day.

Water Safety and Environmental Protection

Recycled Water Quality

Our recycled water systems reduce contaminants like heavy metals, nutrients, nitrogen, and organic matter.

Industrial water discharges that reach receiving water bodies without adequate treatment can carry heavy metals, excess phosphates, nitrates, and biological contaminants that damage aquatic ecosystems and trigger regulatory action. We identify the specific contaminant profile of your discharge and design the treatment response to match your consent conditions.

Environmental Management

We reduce pollutants and protect aquatic life, groundwater supplies and ocean environments from harmful wastewater discharge.

Effective environmental management starts well before a treatment system is designed. We work with clients to understand their obligations under applicable environmental legislation – including New Zealand's Resource Management Act and state and federal EPA frameworks in Australia – and to identify where existing operations carry the greatest risk of non-compliance.

Water Engineering

Talk to our water engineers for solutions tailored to your specific problem, regardless of size or complexity. From solving challenges around water pollution and water cycle management to the design of pumping stations and sewage systems, our water consultants are here to bring safe water to your next project.

Our engineering services cover the full range of water and wastewater conveyance infrastructure – gravity sewers, rising mains, pump stations, river intake structures, and treated water pipelines. We provide multi-disciplinary design across civil, mechanical, and electrical elements, and can support construction, commissioning, and operational testing through to project handover.

Water Infrastructure

Our water infrastructure specialists handle installations large and small, urban and rural. With deep knowledge of the water sector spanning nearly 50 years, our team has the expertise to deliver purpose-built water infrastructure and waste treatment systems that make efficient and sustainable use of our planet’s most precious natural resource.

Our infrastructure work covers asset condition assessment, capacity upgrades, and the integration of new treatment infrastructure with existing water systems and networks. For greenfield developments, we plan water and wastewater infrastructure early in the project lifecycle, before design decisions downstream make changes costly.

Water Resources Management

Tell us about your water resources management challenges and the result you want to achieve. Whether your biggest issues are to do with groundwater or surface water, allocation or recovery, industrial or human – we’ll help you solve them with customised strategies that are both cost-efficient and environmentally sound.

Our team understands how resource management frameworks operate across Australia and New Zealand, and can support clients through the consenting process as part of a broader project engagement.

Industries We Serve

Industrial wastewater varies considerably in character depending on how it is produced. No two industries generate the same waste stream, and treatment systems need to be configured around the specific contaminants your operations produce.

Municipal and Utilities

Municipal water and wastewater treatment sits at the intersection of public health and long-term infrastructure planning, with environmental compliance shaping both. Population growth, ageing assets, and discharge standards all add pressure to systems that are already running hard to keep up with demand for safe to drink water.

We have worked alongside councils, water utilities, and government agencies across Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific on projects ranging from master planning and consent strategy through to the design and upgrade of wastewater and drinking water treatment plants serving tens of thousands of people. Our experience across New Zealand's major municipal water treatment projects gives us a practical understanding of the pressures councils operate under, and what realistic solutions look like.

Food and Beverage

Food and beverage processing generates wastewater with high organic loads from sugars, starches, fats, and cleaning chemicals entering the waste stream during production. These loads can vary significantly across a single production day, which places real demands on treatment system design and requires careful management to maintain treated water quality within consent limits.

Our consultants understand the operational realities of food and beverage facilities and design treatment systems that can handle variable influent quality without falling out of compliance during peak production periods.

Dairy

Dairy processing produces some of the most nutrient-rich and organically complex wastewater of any food industry. Fat, protein, lactose, and cleaning agents all contribute to a waste stream that requires careful management to meet discharge limits for nutrients and biological oxygen demand.

New Zealand and Australia's dairy sectors are among the most significant in the world, and we have worked with producers and processors across both countries on treatment systems designed around the specific demands of dairy operations.

Mining and Resources

Mining and resources operations can produce wastewater with elevated concentrations of heavy metals, suspended solids, acids, and other compounds that require specialist treatment before discharge or reuse. The remote locations of many mining sites add the further complexity of treatment systems needing to function with limited on-site technical support.

We design and evaluate treatment systems for mining and resources clients that address the specific contaminant profile of the operation and meet applicable discharge consent conditions, while remaining practical to operate and maintain in the field.

Industrial Manufacturing

Industrial manufacturing covers a wide range of manufacturing processes, each generating wastewater with its own contaminant mix. Chemical manufacturing may introduce complex organic compounds and reactive substances. Metal fabrication, finishing and processing can produce effluent with heavy metal loads. General manufacturing often generates wastewater with oils, greases, and suspended solids that require grease removal and pre-treatment before discharge to sewer.

We work with manufacturing plants of all sizes and configurations. Our consultants assess the specific wastewater characteristics of your manufacturing process and identify the treatment configuration – whether chemical, physical, biological, or a combination – that meets your discharge requirements at the lowest practicable cost.