Dashboards Make a Difference at North Queensland Ports

Getting a three-person team, thousands of dollars of specialised equipment and a customised vessel out on the water in remote northwest Queensland is all in a day’s work for the crew at Vision Environment.

“On the back of previous successful projects at Abbot Point and Hay Point, we were asked by North Queensland Bulk Ports to run environmental monitoring for their Weipa maintenance dredging,” says Leonie Andersen, director at Vision Environment.

“We were able to mobilise rapidly and deliver high quality, real-time data to help them manage potential marine environmental impacts,” she says.

Real-time data for real-time management

It’s just one of the many ways in which Vision Environment adds value for its clients, going above and beyond to tailor its services to meet diverse project needs.

Kevin Kane, senior manager environment and planning at North Queensland Bulk Ports, has relied on Vision Environment for a range of monitoring services at the ports.

“We are committed to protecting the natural environments in which we operate and so we need absolute confidence that we’re getting the most thorough and reliable information.

“To manage a dredge in real time, you need real-time data, and that’s what Vision Environment provides,” he says.

Every ten minutes, Vision Environment’s telemetry buoys collect water quality data and send it up to the cloud. So, six times an hour you have a real-time update, which is plotted on a dashboard that is custom built for the client.

Exceedances in water quality thresholds create immediate alerts, while a traffic light system on the dashboard gives an easy visual overview of the project at any point in time.

Hay Point project

However, you also need transparency throughout the process. It’s another element where Vision Environment sets itself apart, Kevin says.

Earlier this year, Vision Environment worked with North Queensland Bulk Ports to conduct marine monitoring throughout its Hay Point maintenance dredging project. The Vision Environment team ran a rigorous monitoring program with pre-, during and post-dredge phases.

“This project had a lot of awareness from the public and we wanted to make information accessible throughout the process,” says Kevin.

“In addition to developing our internal management software, Vision Environment worked with us to create a public-facing dashboard that also displayed real-time water quality data.

“It was a way of helping us to build trust with the community and to show that we invest in and take seriously our environmental monitoring responsibilities,” he says.

Leonie says “we worked with Kevin and his team to develop a very visual way of reporting on monitoring activities. We even installed a GPS tracker on the dredge vessel, which we plugged into the dashboard, so that people could check online and see where the vessel was at any moment.”

Learn more about Visions Environment’s monitoring services.