I am working with the engineering team of Bay of Plenty Regional Council to develop a draft Room for the River Strategy for some of the council's river and drainage schemes. The work is part of the council's River Scheme Sustainability project and is incorporating room for the river principles and approaches. Image from Bay of Plenty Regional Council Rivers and Drainage Asset Management Plan 2024-2074

I have been helping West Coast Regional Council with a review of their flood, coastal and drainage schemes, and spent some time this week on the Coast as part of that. The work commenced last year with Council approval of a 20-point terms of reference, and is examining a range of strategic and operational matters across the 23 schemes. The terms of reference I helped prepare and the background to the review can be found here. The work to date is described in this report to

Post Flight Test, 3 May 2026 Not directly related to my consulting work but I thought I'd share that I've finally obtained my Private Pilots Licence (Aeroplane). This comes after many years of starts and stops fitted around work commitments. I sat and passed my flight test in the airspace around Tauranga last Sunday after stepping up the frequency of my training flights with Tauranga Aero Club. The quality of the training received from the instructor team at the club was o

The abstract for the paper I presented at Water New Zealand's Stormwater Conference 2026 in Auckland in May can be found here on the Water NZ website. The full paper will be uploaded by Water New Zealand to their website sometime in the future but in the meantime contact me if you'd like a copy, or to discuss any aspect of the paper. The paper is titled The Origin and Use of the "100-Year Flood Protection Standard" in New Zealand and answers the questions: When was the 100-y