Regulatory, compliance and legal

Policy and regulatory guidance

As regulation becomes more demanding, the need for your policies and procedures to be up to date and actively ensure compliance becomes both more necessary and more challenging. Our specialists are experienced leaders in their fields of practice with the knowledge and experience to help your organisation to develop policies and procedures, that reflect and define best practice environmental management as well as support your business objectives.

This expertise extends across:

• Water quality including water sensitive urban design
• Aquaculture services, including leasing and licencing applications
• Coastal and flood hazard management including emergency management
• Ecological services including species and area-based conservation management
• Waste management including, wastewater discharges, oil pollution abatement and hazardous materials
• Developing and refining environmental quality documentation including EMPs, EMS, EHSSQ and ISO 14001

Project scoping and feasibility studies

As a trusted advisor for our customers, BMT can work with you to scope the key issues associated with a project or proposal from its earliest stages. This includes helping you to design - as well as collect - field monitoring data and surveys to establish the critical baseline of information to support your project. With an expert knowledge of the regulations and approvals that apply to your project, we can develop regulatory agency as well as broader consultation and engagement programmes with your key stakeholders.

Environmental impact assessments (EIAs)

BMT has an international reputation for preparing high-quality EIAs and associated technical studies. Preparation of such documents requires a comprehensive knowledge of all relevant national, state and local authority regulations, standards and practices, and the reporting requirements to satisfy the various approval processes. Key to an effective EIA is an understanding of relevant cause-effect-response pathways and the identification of environmental threshold, beyond which impacts are considered unrecoverable. We work to develop environmental mitigation and monitoring measures that will effectively reduce environmental risk whilst maintaining project viability. In doing so we draw on BMT’s multi-disciplinary, global resources to satisfy the demands of diverse regulatory environments and different industries.

Stakeholder consultation

Effective communication and consultation with stakeholders and the community remains the benchmark of an effective EIA process. BMT engineers, scientists and planners recognise this and strive to effectively communicate the often complex technical analysis we carry out, as well as being prepared to present the information to regulatory agencies and stakeholders. Using the latest graphical and GIS software, we can ensure the presentation of our output is both technically robust and effectively communicated.

Environmental approvals

Getting the necessary approvals for your project can be a complex and demanding task. Our expertise in interpreting the broad range of environmental laws and policies that can apply to a project means that we can help you manage the whole process, from identifying and measuring impacts to liaising with regulatory agencies and preparing environmental management and mitigation plans. We apply our experience operating in differing regulatory environments and industries to your advantage.

Design of environmental management plans

Our experience in, and reputation for, developing environmental management plans (EMPs) means that we can help you successfully meet the requirements of permits and approval and in doing so the needs of your customers and regulators. Based on project specific data, our EMP design goes beyond statutory reporting requirements to help you fully understand and manage all the environmental factors associated with your project.

Compliance assessments and environmental audits

Our auditing and compliance assessments can help you improve project efficiencies by recognising outstanding processes and remediating ineffective ones. BMT environmental audit teams hold internationally recognised qualifications and have the experience to identify the root causes of any issues, to ensure compliance and to encourage best practice and support continuous improvement.

BMT’s team of auditors have underlying qualifications in engineering, naval architecture and environmental science, offering our clients an integrated approach to compliance auditing services.

We work across a diverse array of market sectors, including vessel design & performance, defence, oil & gas, water & environment, ports & terminals, mining & bulk handling, buildings infrastructure & rail and have conducted numerous, environmental, systems, safety & design audits.  

Decommissioning and closure studies

BMT are recognised as decommissioning experts, and we offer a range of marine and coastal services to support infrastructure decommissioning projects. Decommissioning strategies are increasingly required to deal with and manage the worlds ageing energy assets. Combined with our depth of expertise in management of Australian marine and coastal issues, BMT can provide assistance in developing effective and innovative company strategies towards decommissioning.

Expert Witness Services

Our credibility and technical prowess within the industry underpins the expert opinion we provide for legal and insurance clients. Our expert witnesses are trained and experienced in presenting opinion and answering cross-questioning to assist environment courts with assessments of development proposals.

We provide expert advisory services in:

• Flooding, including emergency flood and storm tide management
• Coastal processes and engineering
• Water quality including stormwater management
• Environment and ecology

Risk assessment and management

BMT risk practitioners utilise risk-based assessments and risk management processes under the International Standard for Risk Management (ISO 31000). Our risk management services range from project-specific chemical and ecological risk assessment through to assessing and mitigating risks from natural hazards such as floods and storm surges on existing assets and infrastructure. BMT is a global leader in understanding the future risks to both built and natural assets from climate change, and the complex challenges that lay ahead in the context of effective adaptation. Our clear and actionable findings can help you successfully identify, assess, manage, monitor and mitigate risk as well as to develop effective treatment and adaptation strategies.

Climate risk services

While public debate has focused on the legitimacy of climate change science and appropriate responses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, more and more emphasis is being placed on developing local climate change responses including building resilience. BMT is a world leader in this emerging field of climate change adaptation working across a broad range of sectors including state and local government agencies, critical infrastructure owners and operators, the finance sector, the health sector and defence and security entities.

We provide expert services in:

• Science translation and brokering
• Qualitative and quantitative risk assessment
• Adaptation and resilience planning
• Monitoring and financial disclosure