Flood events are the most expensive type of natural disaster in Australia with losses affecting agriculture, business, key ecosystems, and infrastructure, not to mention the emotional and physical costs to those personally affected.
South-East Queensland is regularly impacted by flood events. This has put considerable pressure on local governments with staff and resources stretched to the limit to restore flood damaged roads and transport networks (vital for supply to regional economies).
GenEng Solutions was initially engaged by both the Lockyer Valley Regional Council (LVRC) and the Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC) after the major 2011 floods to assist with emergency flood repairs and rebuilding after this catastrophic event. Since then, we have been re-engaged following more recent flood events in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025.
Approach
Delivering these programs involves:
- Liaising with Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA) on Council’s behalf to ensure that compliance with all legislation and guidelines are met
- Emergency damage inspections and logging defects
- Collating submissions for Reconstruction of Public Assets funding
- Managing the delivery of the repair works
- Reporting to QRA
Challenges
Concurrent events necessitated repairing multiple sites multiple times. Due to the high frequency of the flooding events, the public were understandably distressed and frustrated over delays in completion of repair works. GenEng staff assisted Council to address these concerns and keep the public informed of updates. We also assisted the Councils to successfully submit for betterment funding so that infrastructure could be improved and made more immune to flooding.
Due to Australia-wide material shortages caused by the COVID pandemic, there were difficulties procuring materials for the works. To prevent supply delays, we changed our procurement practices taking into consideration the long lead-times for delivery of materials.
Outcomes
Works for the 2024 and 2025 flood events are ongoing. However, the 2022 events programs have successfully been acquitted for both LVRC and SDRC with these two councils being the only ones to acquit their flood programs within DRFA timeframes without requiring an extension. We were pleased to be able to achieve funding recovery rates of 98% and 99.6% for these Councils.