Editor of The Australian Pipeliner, Scott Pearce, recently took a trip to Horsham to be part of a kick-off barbeque and induction meeting for traditional owners and cultural heritage representatives who were going to be involved in pre construction archaeological surveys on the WMPP. Dave Maloney, Director of CNC Project Management, told Scott about the project.

“This first stage of the WMPP has required us to negotiate terms for carrying out pre-construction site clearance works in a fairly short space of time with various Native Title and Cultural Heritage groups for the district, while balancing the different groups’ requirements for cultural heritage management. We are now finalising the terms for ongoing agreements that cover protocols for management of cultural heritage during construction of the project,” Mr Maloney said.

“The idea of having a barbeque as part of our induction for the project is to ensure that we send out the message about OH&S, as well as to provide general information about the logistics of the project and make sure everyone is comfortable with being involved. We have been very happy with the way the first stage has progressed to date, and feel that this will be good for the future stages of the project, as many of the same groups and people will be involved later on as well.

“The whole project will see us negotiating agreements with four Native Title groups and four Cultural Heritage groups. Interestingly, this includes the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, who is the first group in Victoria to receive a positive Native Title Determination. We are providing the project with two archaeologists to carry out the cultural heritage assessments to ensure all pre-construction clearances will be complete prior to the construction contract being let for the first stage. Our philosophy is to carry out a complete assessment on the ground prior to construction, thereby minimising monitoring during construction, which can slow progress and be costly.

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“Managing the Cultural Heritage for the project is important as the area around the Grampians and the Wimmera River is rich in cultural material. The register search for the area of stage one of the project has found over 1,000 registered sites, so we need to ensure that the way we manage and document all of this information is systematic and workable for the construction crews.

“GWMWater appreciates the way we’ve managed to get the project up and running, and has given instructions to commence the negotiations and cultural heritage assessments of the next stage of the project. This is good for us, as it means we have continuity of work on a very interesting project,” Mr Maloney said.

At the time of going to print, CNC Project Management had completed cultural heritage assessment of over 950 km of the alignment for stage one of the WMPP.