IPWEA Vic Blog

Coastal acid sulfate soils (CASS) occur naturally and have been present for thousands of year along victoria’s coasts and estuaries. These soils are harmless if left undisturbed. However, increased human activity in coastal regions has lead to increased risk of disturbance of CASS. Disturbance of CASS can cause impacts on the environment, infrastructure and human health. CASS-related incidents are often difficult and costly to mitigate and damage is irreversible.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment has developed the Victorian Best Practice Guidelines for Assessing and Managing Coastal Acid Sulfate Soils (BPMG) which were released earlier this week.  These guidelines have been produced to guide landowners, developers, planners and decision makers through a risk identification approach that will assist them to make decisions about the assessment and management of coastal acid sulfate soils.

Take a look at the guidelines here

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The Road Safety Engineering Toolkit is a reference tool for road engineering practitioners in state and local governments. It outlines best-practice, low cost, high return road environment measures to achieve a reduction in road trauma. It considers crash type, safety deficiency, tratment type, road users, road safety investigations, case studies.

The toolkit is updated regularly and can be accessed on line through the ARRB website here

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Dear Member

All council CEOs have received from the Chief Executive of VicRoads an invitation to attend a forum on 12 November to provide an opportunity for senior management within Local Government and VicRoads to exchange perspectives on the delivery of the Victorian Transport Plan and roads related programs.  In the process, it is hoped that delegates can jointly identify opportunities for enhancing stakeholder relationships and your participation in this Forum is expected to add value to the resulting deliberations.

Participants in the Forum include Jim Betts, Gary Liddle, senior representatives from local government industry bodies together with VicRoads senior management.

The emphasis will be on exchanging ideas and building relationships rather than one-way presentations.  The program can be downloaded here.

The forum is being sponsored by Roads Australia as a service to industry and there will be no charge to participants.

This will be a landmark event which will hopefully bring local government representatives and the Chief Executives of councils in Victoria together to discuss how we can achieve more together. It is also expected that councils may be represented by Councillors and senior officers who are responsible for the construction and management of roads.

Details of the Forum are as follows:

• Date: Friday, 12^th November
• Time: 9.30am to 3pm
• Venue: Manningham Function Centre, 699 Doncaster Road, Doncaster (Melway Ref:
  Map 33; E12)
• Theme: Delivering the Victorian Transport Plan – The Partnership Imperative

To assist with accommodation and catering we ask all participants to register.  To do so or to enquire about details, please contact Rachael Rooney on rachael@roads.org.au or 5942 7222.

Regards,  Bob Seiffert

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The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) launched the Green Star – Public Building PILOT tool in October 2010 to support the sustainable planning, design and construction of high-performance public buildings. 

To be eligible for Green Star assessment, projects must meet all four provisions of the Green Star Eligibility Criteria, space use, spatial differentiation, conditional requirements, timing of certification.

Take  a look at the Green Star Rating Toolkit found on the GBCA website.

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