Washdown station users, locations and current infrastructure

Hey Sara, thanks for your questions – they’re great, and have picked up on some of the challenges that are present on the Peninsula. I’m going to respond to your queries as you put them to us, and provide some additional suggestions below.

1. For the purpose of the challenge, it would best to assume that maintenance will conducted by rangers, and that the wash stations will be on state roads. We’ll confirm this, as it relates to your 4th questions

2. Can you provide further insight into how the legal consequences would affect your solution design? If you’re approaching this from the context of the reliability of the system, and there being penalties for the operators of the washdown stations if they not operational, it would be ok to assume not. It might be interesting to have a look at washdown stations used in the agricultural sector for biosecurity, particularly with regards to livestock. There may be stronger regulatory codes that relate to system design and redundancies for remote sites that could have crossover with your project.

3. a. Assume for the purpose of your project that it will be rangers, or contractors that have received training and support from the system designer/builder. Further, given a washdown station would have several cored trades to oversee the plumbing, electrical, mechanical and disposal elements of the design, any efforts to simplify the system an its maintenance requirements would be well received.

4. We’ll return to you with information regarding the locations of the existing wash down stations. To gain insight on the existing infrastructure, we’d suggest the gallery of photos in the Design Area Transport & Access webpage of the Challenge Website, where there a number of images of vehicle washdown stations.

We’ll endeavour to get back to you next week with further info.

Luke

Hey Sara,

I’ve made some enquiries with our colleagues, and have got some additional information for you.

The wash station that appears in the images in the design area is on a state road, and is at the time of staff visiting, it was not operational, and had not been operational for some time. As a state asset, it was their responsibility to maintain.
This prompted this project brief; the community and rangers would like a solution that is cost effective to install, operate and maintain themselves, due to unreliability of existing solutions. Further, these wash stations would be likely placed at the entrance to lands in the control of local land orgs and councils, at the junction between state roads and local lands/roads.

Our colleagues have also informed me that the wash stations, when they are functional, are not compulsory; in that, a motorist can drive past it without using it, as the stations are not staffed 24/7 if at all. This means that washing your vehicle is a voluntary form of compliance. Where voluntary compliance exists, it would be an appropriate assumption to make that the operators of a wash station would not be legally liable for the damage done by non-compliant vehicles.

Hope this further information is helpful!

Luke