Our achievements over 3 years
Three-year independent review
In February and March 2017, an independent Three-year program review of the Water Sensitive SA program was undertaken by Wave Consulting with objectives to provide an evaluation against an agreed set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and evaluation questions.
The report is based on two datasets: Perceptions of funding partners (collected through 16 one-on-one interviews with individual funding partner representatives), and perceptions of practitioners, gathered through an online survey.
The evaluation revealed that our funding partners and practitioners are very supportive and positive about the work to date, and would like to see the program continue.
There is an issue in managing expectations, and managing the frustration with the change (or lack of change) in regulation to mandate WSUD in new developments. Achieving a ‘culture change’ is a long-term goal, and has yet to be achieved to date, according to the interviewees.
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| Alternative water schemes, managing whole of lifecycle costs seminar | Pathways to water sensitive communities through planning seminar | Maintenance of WSUD assets training |
The key results from the online survey are:
- 84% of practitioners are satisfied or very satisfied with the program to date
- 96% of practitioners believe that the program should continue
The funding partners were reasonably consistent in their perceptions of the program, and these are represented graphically in Figure 1.
Figure 1 – Funding partner perceptions of the program
The report makes recommendations regarding the potential repackaging of the strategic direction of the program viewed through a new strategic lens, and of the contribution of WSUD to community resilience in an uncertain climate future.
The survey of practitioners identified priorities for training in the areas of:
- preparing a business case for WSUD projects (including cost-benefit analysis)
- maintenance of WSUD assets
- construction of WSUD assets
- design of streetscale raingardens
- WSUD policy interpretation for development.
The 3-year review report is now available.