Research Team

Our researchers come from varied organisations. Please click the following company links for short biographies for each of the researchers.

National Water Commission

Peter McLoughlin

Team Leader - Urban Water Reform, Water Reform Group

Paul Smith-PhD
Water Reform Group

Paul is currently the Team Leader for the Integrated Resource Planning for Urban Water project for the National Water Commission. He is a member of the Steering Committee and is involved in the strategic organisation of this project. He has been involved in Water Cycle Management at Local Government. He holds a Degree in water science and hydraulic engineering and a PhD in Water Cycle Management.

Water Services Association of Australia

Adam Lovell
Manager, Science and Sustainability

Brisbane City Council

Greg Tucker-BEng and MBA
Business Systems Manager City Policy & Strategy Division

Greg holds the position of Principle Program Officer in Brisbane City Council and has 25 years Water Industry experience. Greg spent 20 years with Brisbane Water in various roles before joining Water Resources, the Council’s policy and strategy arm responsible for Integrated Water Management. Greg holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Queensland as well as engineering qualifications from the Queensland University of Technology.

Shelly Seward
Project Administrator Water Resources

Shelly Seward will be the project administrator for the BCC case study. Shelly holds a business degree from Manchester Metropolitan University and has ten years of project management experience. She has wide-ranging project management skills including planning, monitoring and reporting developed in both the United Kingdom and Australia. 

Wagga Wagga City Council

Jeffrey Brad
Strategic Asset Planner - Environmental Assets 

Heinz Kausche
Manager Environmental Services

Riverina Water

Peter Clifton
Director of Engineering

Commonwealth Scientific Iindustrial Research Organisation

Matthew Inman– BTec, Bsc, PhD

Program Leader Urban Systems

Dr Matthew Inman will be involved with expanding the current WSAA Guide to Demand Management and associated tools. He leads the CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems (CSE) Urban Systems Program. His research interests include urban water management, integrated resource management and end use analysis. He has been involved in a joint collaboration between CSIRO and ISF for a Smart Metering project, funded by the Smart Water Fund (Victoria) and the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship. He helped to evaluate techniques for the measurement of residential water demand by end use, improving the accuracy and reducing the cost of developing a demand profile for each residential appliance and water-using fixture. This will inform demand and supply planning to better address the future water requirements of Australian cities. Dr Inman initially led the Water Smart Communities research within the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship and led the development of a water End Use model which was adopted by the Water Services Association of Australia.

Prior to joining CSIRO, he worked as a Demand Analyst with Sydney Water managing the supply-demand balance for major urban centres. He has also consulted for organisations in the United Kingdom on projects addressing efficient use of water and energy in  households by conceiving, designing and constructing decision support tools for clients in the energy and water sectors.

Wendy van Dok
Dr Wendy van Dok is a biologist with a PhD in aquatic ecology. She has 20 years experience in water related fields ranging from biotechnology, catchment management, greywater, onsite wastewater management, WSUD, water efficient landscape design and water quality monitoring. Wendy has worked as a research scientist, a private consultant and in local government. She now works for CSIRO as a Research Scientist in the area of Resource Efficient Urban Development.
 

Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney

Andrea Turner-BEng (Hons),DIC, Msc, CEng
Research Director

Andrea is the co-project manager for this project and will be very much involved with writing the publications, overseeing the Wagga Wagga case studies and expanding the WSAA Guide. Andrea is a chartered civil engineer with a post graduate degree in environmental engineering from Imperial College, London. She has over fifteen years engineering and research experience in water, wastewater, stormwater and environmental assessment gaining extensive project management experience in both large and small scale civil engineering projects in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia. Since joining ISF in 2001, Andrea has managed and conducted research in numerous water related projects involving the application of the principles of integrated resource planning, IRP (also known as least cost planning (LCP)) that assists water service providers to determine the most appropriate options to provide water services in their region both in the short and long term.

She has been involved in end use analysis, demand management and IRP projects with clients such as the Queensland EPA (Qld), Brisbane City Council (Qld), Power and Water and the Department of Infrastructure Planning and Environment (NT Government), ACTEW Corporation and Environment ACT (ACT), Sydney Water Corporation (NSW), Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources (NSW), Water Corporation (WA), South Australian Water Corporation and Barwon Water and Central Highlands Water in Victoria. She has also worked with the Water Services Association of Australia, International Water Association and EU SWITCH on developing Guides and training materials on IRP.

Doctor Simon Fane-BSc (Hons),PhD
Research Director

Simon is also the co-manager of this project and will be involved in managing, researching and writing key resource papers. He is also involved in overseeing the Brisbane City Case Study and developing workshops and practicioner training. Simon holds a first class Honours degree in Microbiology from the UNSW and a PhD in ‘Sustainable Futures’ from UTS. Simon has been a researcher at ISF since 1998. In that time he has worked extensively in water conservation, integrated resource planning, decentralised wastewater management and sustainable urban water generally. Currently Simon works on a range of research and consulting projects across the field of sustainable urban water. Simon has managed several of ISF's larger urban water projects including the 'Evaluation of supply and demand-side options' for the NSW Department of Infrastructure and Planning which formed the basis for the 2004 Sydney Metropolitan Water Plan and in 2006 the 'Costing for Sustainable Outcomes in Urban Water Systems' guidebook for the CRC for Water Quality and Treatment and Utility partners. Among other activities Simon is current leading a ‘Regulatory Impact Statement for minimum water efficiency standards in plumbing products' for the Commonwealth Government Department DEWHA.

Doctor Damien Giurco-BE, BSc, PhD
Research Director

Damien Giurco is a Research Director at the Institute and will be involved with researching methids of best practice, benchmarking and practicioner workshops. Damien has research and consulting expertise in industrial ecology, water end-use analysis and policy development. He is currently ISF's project director for the Smart Water Fund's "Industrial Ecology Opportunities in Melbourne" project considering the water and energy implications of industrial water recycling options for Port Melbourne. He also leads the Smart Water Fund Project on "Innovative techniques for End Use Measurement". His experience in assessing options of the water and energy implications for long term supply-demand balance planning for water utilities spans projects in Geelong (Barwon Water Strategy), Ballarat (Central Highlands Water Demand Management Option) and Sydney (Review of Sydney's Metropolitan Water Plan).

Doctor Roel Plant-Msc, PhD
Research Director

Roel is a Research Director at the Institute and will lead the monitoring and evaluation of demand management programs by researching local and international developments in this emerging field.  He has extensive experience in Urban Water Management and Integrated Water and Resources Management (IWRM). Roel's current projects focus on the environmental cost-benefit analysis and valuation of key externalities in the Melbourne Metropolitan area by applying integrated resource planning to support cost-effective, sustainable policy development. His other interests include the interdependencies between urban and rural water use, complex systems theory and related tools for sustainability.

Joanne Chong-BCom, BEng (Hons)
Research Principle

Jo will be a part of the climate change modelling team and will also assist with the Brisbane City Case Study. She has experience in applying economic analysis to a wide range of sustainability and environmental management and policy issues. Jo  has worked with the Australian Government providing economics and policy advice. As a senior research economist at the Productivity Commission, Jo worked on several public inquiries and research studies including on irrigation externalities, Great Barrier Reef water quality, waste management and energy efficiency. With the Environmental Economics Unit of the Department of Environment and Heritage, Jo advised on policy issues including waste management, chemicals management and climate change.  At IUCN, Jo undertook community-based participatory social research, economic analysis, and project management for several wetlands management projects in Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Nepal.

Louise Boronyak-BEcon, MEM
Project Co-ordinator

Louise joined ISF as the Project Coordinator for the National Water Commission project. She will be involved in the communication of the research findings, organsing of the workshops as well as the training and managing the relationship between the collaborators. She completed a Master of Environmental Management at UNSW and has worked in a range of project management, coordination and stakeholder communication roles in green businesses and the finance sector. Louise's background is in economics and finance and in various international banks where she analysed and valued investment portfolios.  At ISF she has been involved in research to calculate the economic feasibility of demand management options to determine a cost effectiveness benchmark for water conservation programs for Rous Water. Prior to joining ISF she worked for a consulting firm that provided advice on technologies to improve the efficiency of buildings in terms of energy and water, recommending different demand management options and provided advice on systems for rainwater and greywater re-use.  She has been involved in the product design, development and commercialisation of Solar Cells and Solar Hot water systems.

Monique Retamal - BE ME
Research Consultant

Monique Retamal will be involved in the benchmarking and sustainability assessment components of this project due to her expertise in water modelling and options analysis. Recent work has included modelling water and energy interactions for a large mixed commercial and residential site where co-generation, sewer mining and rain water harvesting are being considered. She has Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering and a Masters Degree in Water Resources. Monique is currently the project manger on ISF Water-Energy Nexus project with CSIRO which is examining water and energy issues in the residential context. Her experience includes undertaking environmental impact assessment, hydrology studies, hydraulic and water quality modelling, hydro geochemical analysis and water sensitive urban design. She has a special interest in modelling integrated water cycle systems, using a combination of rainwater and stormwater harvesting, recycled wastewater and demand management techniques.

John McKibbin–BEng (Hons)
Research Consultant

John will be assisting with the Wagga Wagga case study and development of models and tools for Intergrated Resource Planning (IRP).  Drawing from a background in civil and environmental engineering, John’s focus lies in applying IRP to support cost-effective, sustainable policy development. His prior work includes designing water management features for a range of residential and commercial developments, and assisting with feasibility investigations to inform regional water resource planning.

Since joining the Institute, John has been engaged with a range of projects including reviewing water efficiency and conservation options with the Water Services Association of Australia, developing an end- use and options model with the South Australian Water Corporation, and adapting the IRP method and tools to inform sanitation planning. In addition to his consulting work, John has been actively involved in pro bono education and technical assistance programs through his ongoing role in Engineers Without Borders.

Julian Fyfe-BE, BA, ME
Research Consultant

Julian Fyfe will explore the various methods currently used for demand forecasting and identify the various methods used for climate correction modelling. He is a fully qualified environmental engineering and has been awarded Bachelors (Hons Class I) and Masters degree in the field, and is currently writing his PhD. His areas of expertise include water and wastewater management, resource recovery, cleaner production and water quality assessment and protection. Prior to joining ISF, Julian was undertaking research at the University of Wollongong (funded by the Sydney Catchment Authority) assessing the effectiveness and long term sustainability of best management practice in dairy shed waste management. Julian's main strengths lie in design and assessment of environmental monitoring schemes, and evaluation and review of environmental performance and sustainability. As an analyst, modeler and options specialist with ISF, he draws on a suite of analytical skills including collection, collation and management of data, quality assessment and control, applied statistics and numerical modeling.

James Patterson-BEng(Env), BEng(Civil)
Research Consultant

James Patterson, will form part of a team that will interpret how climate change issues should be included in IRP. His area of expertise includes urban water modeling, demand management, and water efficiency regulation projects.  James has a background in environmental engineering with a focus on surface water and groundwater hydrology, and has recently graduated from the University of New South Wales with a double-degree in Environmental and Civil Engineering (Hons 1). His honours thesis investigated surface water-groundwater interactions in a particular catchment using field hydro chemical data to deduce important geochemical, hydro geological, and surface water-groundwater exchange.