4 Project news

Holger regularly sends out email updates to anyone interested in the project (who we have delightfully named ‘friends of the project’). We’ll also upload these updates here.

4.1 November 12 2024

Hi All,

I hope you are all well. Please find below a brief update on what has been happening with our project:

1. PROJECT MILESTONES

  • We had the first meeting with our Project Advisory Committee (PAC), which was our first milestone. The presentation slides for this meeting are attached.
  • We will have our Project Team Conference on Monday next week (18/11). The conference will be held face-to-face at the University of Melbourne. We are still finalising the agenda. Please let me know if you would like to find out more about this.
  • We are currently working on terms for ongoing use and availability for background IP, which is a first-quarter milestone. Although this is not a formal deliverable, we are also working on the ethics approval for our project.
  • We have also been progressing our generic methodology and the development of the four case studies (see 2. below)

2. CASE STUDY DEVELOPMENT

  • We have set up regular 2-weekly meetings with our three industry project partners: Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board (MRLB), North East Catchment Management Authority (NECMA) and Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority (GBCMA).
  • There have been many suggestions for potential studies, which we have distilled into the following 4 case studies. Please note that these are working titles as these case studies are still very much under development, but this will hopefully give you an indication on where we are headed:
    • General Theme: Environmental / Cultural Flows. Case Study: Marne-Saunders Catchment (MRLB).
    • General Theme: Sustainable Agriculture. Case Study: MRLB Smart Agriculture Project (MRLB)
    • General Theme: Water Availability and Security. Case Study: Impact of bushfire on water availability for water supply and agriculture (NECMA)
    • General Theme: Regional Water Resources Planning. Case Study: Regional Waterway Strategy (GBCMA)

3. STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT AND OUTREACH

  • Meetings:
    • Matt, Sam and I visited the MRLB team in Murray Bridge last month
    • As mentioned above, we have set up regular 2-weekly meetings with the case study end users
  • Project Fact Sheet:
    • Our Project Fact Sheet can now be downloaded from our project page on the 1BCRC website. This provides a good way of explaining to people what our project is all about.
  • Media Attention:
    • The University of Adelaide (in collaboration with the CRC) put out a media release on our project.
    • I had a radio interview with Ellis from Flow FM that was aired on 23/10/24.
    • I had a live radio interview with Matt Stephens from ABC Riverland on 24/10/24.
    • The University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute put a post about our project on LinkedIn.

4. PROJECT MEETINGS

We had the first of our monthly meetings for the full project team, including researchers and end users. We will also have quarterly briefing presentations (via Teams) for this “friends of the project” group.

5. PROJECT TEAM NEWS

  • The advert for the University of Melbourne full-time post-doc position has gone out.
  • Matt Armstrong spent a few days in Adelaide with Sam and me and was able to meet some of the other University of Adelaide researchers. As mentioned above, we also went to Murray Bridge to catch up with the MRLB team.
  • Sam Culley has officially started as a fractional post-doc (0.3-0.4) at the University of Adelaide - welcome aboard, Sam!
  • Matt Armstrong has just returned from his honeymoon - congratulations on getting married, Matt!
  • Matt Knowling, who is part of the University of Adelaide research team, has become a father - congratulations, Matt!

6. UPCOMING EVENTS

As mentioned above, we will have our Project Team Conference at Melbourne Uni on Monday next week (18/11), which is one of our first quarter milestones.

7. CONTRACTUAL MATTERS

We have sought a shifting of all of our project milestones due to the late start of our project, which is currently being considered by the PAC.

As always, if you have any comments, queries or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Cheers,

Holger.

4.2 September 20 2024

Hi All,

I hope you are all well. Please find below a brief update on where we are at:

1. AGREEMENT / CONTRACTUAL MATTERS

The big news is that we finally have a project!! The official project start date was September 15 and the last of the paperwork to make everything legal was completed on Tuesday this week (September 17), so we are finally off and running 😊. I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you for your support and patience throughout this process. The 1BCRC team has been particularly helpful over the last few months to make sure things kept moving along.

The major reason for the delay was that the legal team of one of our project partners (NSW DCCEEW) had concerns about some aspects of the CRC’s agreement. The CRC team worked with DCCEEW for several months to try to resolve this issue, but unfortunately insufficient progress was made and the difficult decision was made to proceed without DCCEEW in the first instance to enable the project to commence. This was achieved by an exchange of letters among the remaining project partners, which were all signed within a week, so a massive thanks to all involved to make this happen. I would also like to call out the efforts of the DCCEEW project team in trying to resolve the issues, especially Ben Wolfenden. As you can see, the DCCEEW project team members are still part of this e-mail correspondence and we are hopeful that they will be able to join the project officially soon, so watch this space!

2. PROJECT TEAM UPDATES

UoA Post-Doc:

Matt Armstrong has settled in well and now that we have a signed contract, we can also officially sign up Sam Culley. Matt is currently based in Newcastle, but will move to the Griffith Hub in March next year. In order to make the budget work, Matt is currently working 0.7 FTE on our project and 0.3 FTE at the University of Newcastle. This arrangement will continue until March next year and then Matt will be 1.0 FTE on our project. Sam Culley has worked with me for about 10 years and will join the project at 0.3-0.4 FTE and will be based in Adelaide.

UoM Postdoc:

Avril has put together the selection criteria and advertisement for the UoM post-doc and now that we have a signed contract, she can proceed with this. We also expect that Andrew John from Avril’s team will devote some of his time to our project, which is excellent news. Andrew has also been involved in 1BCRC Quickstart projects.

3. CASE-STUDY REGION VISITS AND OTHER ENGAGEMENT:

Our project team had a strong presence at the recent 1BCRC Annual Event in Mildura, with Matt Armstrong, Sam Culley, Andrew John, Wendy Merritt, Serena Hamilton, Joel Bailey and myself all attending.

Our project was selected for a feature presentation at the Mildura event and I presented our project in Kucha style, which was the requirement. It was certainly an experience, as I had never done a presentation in this format before and I am glad I survived! In case you are interested in the “story” of our project I presented, please find the slides and narrative outline attached.

It was great to catch up with a number of you at the event, including some of our project PAC members (Peter Hayes, Kathryn Young, Joseph Guillaume, Andrew Kremor, Peter Forbes) and to meet some of you for the first time in person!

On PAC matters, I would like to thank Chris Cumming for her enthusiasm and support for our project. Unfortunately, Chris has left GBCMA and will not be part of our project, but has been instrumental in getting us to where we are so far, so thank you!

Matt Armstrong will be visiting Adelaide next week and Matt, Sam and I will be heading up to Murray Bridge on Tuesday to meet with MRLB representatives to progress this case study.

4. UPCOMING EVENTS / ACTIVITIES

Now that we have a project, we will organise a project kick-off meeting soon. It will be great to catch up and get this show on the road.

Cheers,

Holger.

4.3 April 20 2024

Hi All,

I hope you have all had a good few months. I certainly had a fabulous 2 months in Europe and North America, but have been back for just over two weeks now and am trying to catch up!

I would like to say a big thanks to Avril and Matt Armstrong for progressing the project while I was away and for Matt Knowling for dealing with all University of Adelaide related contractual matters in my absence.

Please find below a brief update on where we are at:

1. AGREEMENT / CONTRACTUAL MATTERS

All project partners apart from one have signed the project agreement (thanks!) and we are working with NSW DCCEEW on securing their signature as soon as possible. Once we have jumped this last hurdle, we should be underway and will try to have our kick-off meeting as soon as possible after that.

2. PROJECT TEAM UPDATES

UoA Post-Doc:

Matt has his the ground running and has already engaged with a number of project partners (see 3. below).

UoM Postdoc:

The plan is to advertise for the UoM post-doc once the agreements have been signed.

3. CASE-STUDY REGION VISITS AND OTHER ENGAGEMENT:

Matt caught up with Joel Bailey (MDBA), Carl Walters (GBCMA) and Ben Wolfenden / Carmen Amos / Meegan Judd (DCCEEW) at the recent River Reflections conference (I believe Avril was also there), and with Lachlan Campbell (NECMA) the day before the conference. Now that I’m back, Matt will hopefully visit SA soon and catch up with the MRLB team during that time.

Matt is keen to spend some time working in the offices of our case study partners and has already had fruitful discussions along those lines with Carl, Ben and Lachie, which is looking very promising. Hopefully we can have similar discussions in SA with MRLB.

We have also been asked by the CRC to populate their project fact sheet template for our project and Matt, Joel, Andrew John, Avril and I have been working on this.

4. UPCOMING EVENTS / ACTIVITIES

As mentioned above, hopefully we will be able to have our project kick-off meeting soon, once we have secures the last project agreement signature.

Avril, Matt, Andrew John (fractional UoM post-doc), Sam Culley (fractional UoA post-doc) and I will all attend the CRC’s Annual Event and I have been asked to present on our project. It would be great if you could let me know if you are also planning to attend the event, so that we can make sure we have the opportunity to connect. Thanks.

Cheers,

Holger.