Altona Memorial Park - Blackwood Lawn
Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust
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David Worsley and Rick Di Paola provided innovative water engineering and civil advisory for the Blackwood Lawn precinct expansion. Selected for our expertise in regenerative and low-carbon design, Worsley Consulting Engineers were engaged to develop civil engineering solutions to explore a new standard of sustainable cemetery design.
This was a technically complex site, constrained by highly reactive clay soils that were already damaging existing infrastructure. The project was further challenged by shallow basalt rock less than 2 meters below the surface and an extremely flat topography, making conventional gravity drainage prohibitively expensive.
Our team implemented a Regenerative Civil Design (RCD) approach, using contour berms, swales, and permeable pavements to mimic natural sequences. This solution avoided costly rock excavation and, as quantified by our WC3 Carbon App , achieved a 28% reduction in upfront embodied carbon compared to a conventional design.
