CUTTING through Western Australia’s tangled project approvals process to streamline the development of new mining and infrastructure projects is the core objective of a unique alliance of Western Australian resources consultants.
Three of the state’s leading consultancies have teamed up under the banner Project Approvals Alliance to provide a co-ordinated one-stop-shop project approvals service, as the revived resources boom puts added pressure on already struggling government agencies.
The alliance combines the capabilities of three specialist consultancies: groundwater and environmental approvals consultancy Aquaterra; indigenous heritage and native title specialist Kellie Hill Consulting; and government affairs and communications firm CPR Communications & Public Relations.
CPR general manager Daniel Smith, a former senior adviser to past state development minister Clive Brown, said the alliance was born out of the last mining boom, where projects were often stalled by a lack of departmental resources or proponents’ failure to properly coordinate their applications.
“We saw lots of projects clamouring for government approval and a bureaucracy that was really struggling,” he said. “What (proponents) will get from us is a coordinated plan to get from point A to point B, which is quite unique.”
Aquaterra principal environmental consultant Doug Koontz said providing a coordinated approvals strategy gave companies a significant advantage when it came to navigating the approvals maze in the shortest possible time.
“The most successful projects have been the ones where the proponent is organised,” he said. “If you go to government departments or lead agencies and just throw it totally into their hands, then you are going to be tied up.”
Kellie Hill said the alliance’s specialist services were markedly different from “tacked-on” services sometimes provided by project engineering groups.
“In those cases, engineering drives it to the point where environmental and Aboriginal heritage considerations can be a bit of an afterthought,” Ms Hill said.
The alliance gave proponents access to more than 100 experienced approvals personnel, via a single contact point, she said.
