It’s time to stop tip-toe-ing around the issue of compliance and admit that there are times when what’s specified on paper doesn’t end up in reality. The point is, specs are written for a reason, and ignoring them comes at a cost. Here’s cautionary tale courtesy of John Christie, Director of Technical Services at the [...]
Synergy
BOXING THE ROOTS
How do you feel when you’re up against a challenging street tree project? You know the type - where other council departments are involved and the public aren’t happy about change or about losing parking. This is a pretty fair description of what two divisions at Dubbo City Council were facing – the engineers and [...]
Big Tree, Big Truck, Big Hole
Imagine a project with just five holes and five plants to go into them. Then imagine that those five plants cost around $35,000. If you were responsible for a project like this you’d probably be very focused on taking every step to help each of those plants live long, luscious and thriving lives… The Cairns [...]
46 DEGREES AND GROWING
When something like Black Saturday happens, it becomes a landmark moment - even if you weren’t directly affected by the fires. Apart from the day itself, many people probably also remember the extra-ordinary weather of that first week of February 2009 which lead up to it, especially if they were working outdoors. Steve Day, the [...]
TICKING BOXES
10 YEARS ON We love revisiting our project sites to see how they’re progressing (yes - it’s hard to let go). And since people move around a fair bit these days, it’s not often you can catch up with those you worked with, to get their take on things. So here’s a rare moment - [...]
The Green Street
It’s pretty good when someone who grew up in public housing manages to do something to improve it. And that’s what David Borger did, a few years back, as the then NSW Minister for Housing. Seeing the difference between urban landscapes with big, mature trees and those without, he thought it would be good to [...]
SORTING McEVOY
If two people hadn’t taken a risk, this story would never have been told. But they did, and thanks to them, it has a very happy, storybook ending… Gosford City Council has its fair share of sportsgrounds(around 70 hectares worth), and in amongst them all is the three-hectare section known as McEvoy Oval at Umina [...]
SUCCESS IN THE DRY
When stage one of Adelaide’s Port Expressway was completed around eight years ago, two more stages were waiting in the wings – two single span bascule drawbridges, sitting side by side over the Port River, one for vehicles and the other for rail. Completed in 2008, landscaping was to provide the finishing touch to this [...]
Getting it Right
Tucked away in Sydney’s south west is Camden, the former ‘seat’ of one of Australia’s founding fathers, John Macarthur, and thanks to the city’s fair share of original build-ings, it still has the character of a rural township complete with the classic Australian main street. It’s this street - Argyle Street - that was recently [...]
Turf Talk
Thanks to Roger Ward, Laurence Blacka and Craig Feuerriegel, we’ve put together three little turf case studies – two serious rebuilds and a test plot on a foul site… Let’s begin with Newcastle’s Arthur Edden Oval, hometo both the Northern NSW Soccer Federation and The Lambton Jaffa’s Soccer Club. An enclosed field with a grandstand, [...]
