Environmental

Environment Protection Act 2017 and
Environment Protection Regulations 2021

The Environment Protection Act 2017 has introduced the General Environmental Duty.

Everyone has a duty to reduce the risk to human health and the environment posed by pollution and waste.   

You must eliminate or otherwise reduce risks of harm from your waste or pollution so far as reasonably practicable. 

General environmental duty, section 25,  Environment Protection Act 2017.  In practice, this requires you to proactively plan and prepare your systems to comply with the General Environmental Duty, in the same way you would for your OH&S obligations. 

Environmental Compliance on Civil Construction Projects

Typically, in the civil construction space, such as land development projects, capital works projects, general Infrastructure works, etc., there are a number of environmental compliance criteria that contractors must be able to satisfy and demonstrate documentary evidence thereof at various stages of the contract process, from tender through to the construction and commissioning stages of a project.

The documentation will essentially be the planning and strategy documentation, that clearly show the methodologies to be utilised on a project, in order to achieve and/or exceed compliance requirements as stipulated by the developers and/or authorities in the contract specifications, and under the various deed’s and MOA’s, etc. under which the project works are governed (e.g. MRWA’s – water/sewer, other Authorities, Power companies, etc.).

This compliance requirement also includes the identification and reference to the environmental legislative and regulatory instruments and their subordinate publications (e.g. EPA SEPP’s, Guidelines, Codes, etc.) – that are relevant to the type and scope of works to be undertaken.

A suitable starting point is Publication 1834, Civil Construction, Building and Demolition Guideline. 

Publication 1834 

Required Documents

The common documents that are used to satisfy the criteria above, required to be completed at the pre-mobilisation stage of most projects, and subject to review and audit by the authorities, include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Site Environmental Management plans
2. System-based Environmental Management plans – prepared and tailored for specific projects
3. Environmental Aspects and Impacts Register
4. Environmental Risk Assessments
5. Various environmental instructions and procedures – geared towards controlling specific aspects and minimising impacts (as referenced in the aspects and impacts register, and identified in the site and project-based Environmental Management plans.

Required Systems

Underpinning the requisite documentation and ‘systems’ inputs described above, there must be in place standard and compliant Quality Management Systems that are robust enough and capable of managing various contingencies as they may arise over the life of a project, such as non-conformance and corrective/preventive actions, incident and accident reporting, etc.

A common method and one required for accreditation with a majority of government authorities (MRWA’s, VicRoads, etc.), is for a contractor’s management system to be certified to a reputable standard, including the CCF’s Civil Contractor Management System (CCMS), or the ISO standards (9001, 14001, 45001), to be certified by a JASANZ accredited certifying body.

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