The Authors
Rod
Coulton

Sunwater is Queensland’s largest bulk water service provider, currently owning and managing water infrastructure assets with a replacement value of around $13 billion and supplying approximately 40 per cent of all water used commercially in Queensland. Sunwater owns and manages a regional network of bulk water supply infrastructure, which supports more than 5,000 customers in agriculture, local government, mining, power and industry.

Aither is pleased to be working in partnership with Sunwater, Frank Innovation and Water Resources on the Sunwater Regional Blueprint – the first of its kind in Queensland. The Sunwater Regional Blueprint will outline Sunwater’s long term strategy to achieve increased availability of water in areas currently serviced through its Water Supply Schemes. The Sunwater Regional Blueprint is informed by multiple lines of evidence and decision-making support tools including:

  • A diagnostic that considers global and regional trends that could impact water demand and supply in the future
  • Scenario plans that draw from the diagnostic to map different potential future water demand and supply outlooks over a 20-year period
  • An early stage infrastructure identification, assessment and prioritisation tool that incorporates rapid economic and financial analysis that provides a consistent, scalable approach to prioritising infrastructure options for further analysis in each region and for each scenario plan, and
  • Identification of non-infrastructure responses to each scenario plan.

The Sunwater Regional Blueprint will provide Sunwater and its customers with multiple benefits including:

  • Enabling Sunwater to identify response strategies to various possible futures so they are well prepared to continue to meet the needs of their customers into the future
  • Allowing Sunwater to assess early stage infrastructure opportunities so further work is guided by the potential to deliver economic benefits to regional Queensland and commercial outcomes for Sunwater. This will also serve as an input for Government in their broader state-wide analysis of projects that offer regional economic benefits, and
  • Supporting the objectives set by the DNRME in their Queensland Bulk Water Opportunity Statement (QBWOS) of using existing water resources more efficiently and considering projects that will provide regional economic benefits.

The results of this innovative project to date are demonstrating the value of economics, combined with long-term scenario planning, in helping to shape decision-making that will position Sunwater to continue to meet the needs of its customers and maximise the value of infrastructure investments over the short, medium and long term.