People
Environment North Principal David Rivett has experience in all facets of project establishment from feasibility studies and options analysis through design to construction, operation, and regulation. This allows Environment North to provide real world practical expertise and understanding across most disciplines.
David has professional qualifications and experience in:
- civil and environmental engineering,
- natural resource management / environmental planning,
- environmental management (from conservation to heavy industry),
- compliance auditing of wide range of industries, and
- project management.
He also has highly developed analytical and problem-solving skills that include:
- options analysis (including highly sophisticated multi-criteria analysis techniques),
- assessing resource inventories and determining the significance of values across a wide range of disciplines,
- assisting with resource allocation (what is the best use of the site and parts of the site for the intended range of purposes?), and
- documenting consideration of “need” and the assessment of “prudent and feasible alternatives” which are key questions usually asked by approving agencies: “why this project, now, and on this site?”.
Environment North does not have permanent in-house staff in many of the fields that we advise on. This is a conscious decision and allows us to select the best specialists for the specific work at hand. It also means that we can comfortably work with existing teams that may have the skills already. This happens regularly in our collaborations with large multidisciplinary engineering-based companies.
Company Director
David Rivett: B Eng (Civil) M Nat Res, RPEQ (Ret.), FPIA (Ret.)
Company Principal and founder of Environment North David Rivett has 46 years of professional experience in engineering and environmental planning. He spent the first 15 years of his career in Australia and the UK as a civil engineer working on planning and development of infrastructure including roads, bridges, land development, port development (dredging and spoil disposal), urban water quality management, water resource development, and major planning projects including tourism and coastal management.
Since entering the environmental planning arena (1991), David first obtained a Master’s Degree in natural resource management and broadened his skills and capabilities to cover a number of fields, most of which have involved the integration of all major areas of environmental science into engineering and planning projects via value-adding to specialist work commissioned for the projects. He routinely works with specialists in many allied fields such as air quality, archaeology, biodiversity, bioregional planning, botany, cultural heritage, ecology, groundwater, noise, social impact, soils, sustainability, transport and regional economics, water quality, and zoology. David’s key role has been technical integration, innovation, cross-discipline coordination, and critical evaluation and analysis of technical inputs and paradigms.
Core skills:
- professional qualifications in engineering and natural resource management
- expertise at the interface between the often competing needs of infrastructure and environmental protection
- impact assessment, environmental management, and associated legislation
- a sound knowledge of the North Queensland region, its history, local practices, agency responsibilities and management initiatives
- strategic planning and resource management
- extensive public and agency consultation experience.
