Distributed subsurface retention that removes surface water where pits and pipes can’t.
With the ponding goes the hazard, the mosquitoes and the complaints.
Consistent with AustRoads limits on standing water in traffickable zones.
On a site designed around the system, distributed nodes take the place of an outfall main and a centralised basin – no pumps, no single point of failure, and no land taken out of public open space.
EnviroKerb® provides retention, storage and passive irrigation. It is recorded as a retention asset and is not part of the minor drainage system – not a treatment device, and not an infiltration system where the node is lined. In device-type terms it is a water wise street tree, which is the category the regional stormwater quality guidance already names as an accepted device. Cleaning is carried out to keep water passing through the asset. The maintenance program →
Gross debris is excluded at the kerb line and never enters the structure. Monitoring flags a node before it blocks, and the deviation sets the response – sweeping, then pressure cleaning the tray, then filter replacement.
You aren’t inheriting an asset nobody knows how to service.
Passive irrigation to the root zone, structural soil cells sized to the mature tree – canopy retention without reticulated irrigation or water trucks.
Resolving drainage constraints unlocks adjacent land, often at no cost to Council.
A whole-of-life servicing cost comparison against a centralised basin is prepared for the project.
The approval conversation and the funding conversation are different conversations, with different officers. This is the funding one – the node walked through the nine steps of the asset management planning framework in the IPWEA Green Infrastructure Management Manual.
Why the register entry has to span both. Canopy policy sits with parks. Drainage sits with engineering. The two rarely meet, and the street tree falls through the gap between them. HB 214:2023 asks at Clause 3.3.9 that green infrastructure be expanded with no net loss, and at Clause 3.3.6 that it be integrated with the water systems that sustain it. A council pursuing a canopy target under a strategy with no water in it is not meeting 3.3.6, and will keep missing 3.3.9 because of it.
Two entries, at two levels. The node is recorded as a hybrid green infrastructure asset; the EnviroKerb® units and ETI trays are recorded as engineered components supporting it. Under the manual’s own reporting groupings both belong on the asset register. Components carry their own lifecycle – tree, soil cell, tank module, kerb unit, tray, filter.
Canopy cover and tree survival, retention volume delivered, and the response time on a flagged node. The technical level of service sits under a community level of service the ward can actually recognise – a street that is shaded and does not flood.
The node reports on itself. Performance is read from monitoring data per node rather than reconstructed from an annual inspection round.
Environmental sustainability and climate change are the two demand drivers the manual names for green infrastructure. Both move the same way for canopy and for retention, in the present and projected.
A tiered maintenance response: sweep, pressure clean the tray, replace the filter, replace the module. The unit of renewal is a single module, not a length of street – so renewal is granular and can be scheduled against condition.
A risk register entry alongside the asset register entry. Distributed nodes carry no single point of failure, which is a materially different consequence rating from one basin or one outfall main.
A green asset can be carried at replacement cost, amenity value or ecosystem services value – the manual sets out the options and the recognition tests. Capital cost lands at establishment; operating cost is known by tier.
Hybrid green infrastructure assets and the engineered assets that support them are both long-term financial plan inclusions under the manual’s reporting groupings. This is the step that turns a canopy target into a funded line.
Per-node data is the evidence an asset management plan for green infrastructure normally lacks. It is also what lifts asset management maturity on the next review.
Maintenance is a street sweeper on the rounds the street already gets, per PPCA-OM-001 Rev B, and the filter element is replaced by removal. Matter SensAI measures intake against a calibrated baseline at every node, so a drop in intake flags an inspection well before it becomes a blockage.
Where the drainage network has been designed on the reduced flows, the maintenance schedule and the monitoring are put to council at pre-lodgement with the model.
Each node serves the smallest contributing area that is practicable, so runoff is never gathered up and carried somewhere else to be dealt with. Small volumes held where they land are easier to handle than one large volume at the bottom of the hill, and the storage arrives with the street rather than as a separate structure on land that could have been used for something else.
A centralised basin takes land, takes capital, and carries a whole-of-life cost that sits with council after handover. Distributed nodes take none of that land, and the monitoring tells council which one needs attention rather than leaving an inspection round to find it.
On the register entry, and the order it is made in. The drainage register entry reads stormwater quantity asset. That entry comes first and it stays. The green infrastructure classification sits over it as evidence of multiple function, and belongs in the asset management and valuation conversation rather than the assessment one. Led with on its own, green infrastructure invites an assessor to read the node as a landscape asset, which takes the trunk stormwater function off the table. Within that, two levels: the node is the hybrid green infrastructure asset, and the EnviroKerb® units and ETI trays are engineered components supporting it – which is how the manual models a complex asset already, with components carrying their own lifespans and maintenance regimes.
Not a compliance claim. The Green Infrastructure Management Manual is an asset management manual, not a certification instrument, and IPWEA has not endorsed the TNS™. Nothing here should be read as an endorsement or an accreditation. The manual is useful because it gives the asset a name, a valuation method and a place in a long-term financial plan.
We’ll map the nodes, size the storage and set out the maintenance regime and costings.
Arrange a briefing