Career Development: Working as a water planner

The H₂Oz Careers in Water campaign website provides a description of the roles and duties of a water planner, as well as regular updates on job opportunities in the water planning field. The overview of a career in water planning emphasises planner's key duty in ensuring crucial envrionmental and social objectives are met in water management, and that demand and supply solutions are achievable, cost effective, and meet with government and community expectations.

What is a water planner?

According to the website, water planning is

concerned with ensuring both short and long term solutions to water sourcing, allocation and management. As water sources (i.e. rivers and groundwater reservoirs) are placed under increasing pressure, water planners investigate alternatives to the conventional water supply and they consider solutions to environmental, social and economic issues relating to water.

In this job, water planners are to:

focus primarily on determining sources for the water supply
research and test alternatives such as seawater desalination, water recycling of waste water from sewage, greywater and stormwater systems and rainwater harvesting
focus on ensuring crucial envrionmental and social objectives are met
that solutions are achievable, cost effective, and meet with government and community expectations

The role of a water planner is broadly defined, and includes planners working with federal, state and local government, utilities, regulatory authorities, research instutitions and private companies in the water sector.

Download the Water Planner career fact-sheet here

The H₂Oz Careers in Water website offers information about how to get started in a career in water planning, and job listings for planners interested in working in the Australian water industry.

About H2Oz Careers in Water

The H₂Oz Careers in Water campaign is managed by the Australian Water Association (AWA) and is actively supported by over 30 subscribing organisations in the Australian water industry. The aim of H₂Oz campaign is to generate awareness and provide information on the unique aspects of the Australian water industry. Find out more about the campaign here.