In 1994, Ecos Consulting (Aust) Pty Ltd (Ecos) made a commitment to develop environmental standards for the pipeline industry. Since that time Ecos, together with the pipeline industry, has embarked on the “not so small” task of transforming environmental management from an as needed basis for construction issues to a very important planning and management tool.

The early planning stage of a project is critical in determining successful and timely project completion. Early identification of environmental sensitivities, constraints and drivers can have a significant influence on project schedule and costs. Ecos has long maintained that as the core information relating to a project lies in-house, the best location for the approvals coordination also lies in-house. The NQGP is a case in point.

The EIS Manager for the NQGP, Wendy Mathieson, is a Principal Consultant with Ecos and has been seconded to the Project for over two years, working in-house with the land access, engineering and construction teams to enable fast tracking and successful implementation of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and subsidiary approvals. Working in-house ensured that the EIS Manager was involved in all route and equipment change decisions at the time they were made, enabling document changes to be effectively coordinated, thus minimising the often extensive and time consuming rewriting that frequently results from such changes.

The NQGP Alliance process had the added benefit of having construction and operations involvement from very early in the process enabling both these important elements to provide comment on the EIS and the supporting Environmental Management Plans (EMP) prior to publication. This was highly beneficial once construction commenced since the systems agreed with other stakeholders were able to be implemented by construction. According to Mathieson, being in-house right through the construction phase to provide appropriate advice on approvals to construction has been an invaluable experience. This enabled clarification of why decisions were taken during the EIS and determination of which management measures were adaptable and which ones had been driven by the specific concerns of the various stakeholders. Seeing first hand the difficulties that construction can encounter and for construction to understand exactly what the approvals process can entail will stand all of us in good stead for future projects.

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“In the 10 years that I have worked for Ecos,” said Mathieson, “we have worked on most of the major pipeline projects in Australia. Our role has been to work either for the owner as we did for BHPP/Duke on Eastern Gas, Epic Energy (then Tenneco) on SW Queensland, and Origin on Berri-Mildura; or for the constructor as we did for Nacap on the Tasmanian Gas Pipeline. Working in-house in an alliance has been a beneficial experience, one in which the focus has been on ‘best for Project’ not expedience - all up it has been a win-win for the pipeline and the environment.”