Maintenance worker heat stress a key risk

Motorway upgrade climate risk assessments

Two major motorway upgrade projects in Brisbane had an opportunity to assess climate change risks through their Infrastructure Sustainability (IS) rating programs. The rating scheme assigned a ‘very high’ materiality to the climate change credits, making good performance highly valuable for points.

For each project, Losee Consulting reviewed project requirements, conducted climate and adaptation research, facilitated stakeholder risk workshops, applied the AS5334 process, and compiled a risk assessment and adaptation plan. Our method featured:

• Using the CSIRO/BOM ‘climate analogues’
• Addressing people-related risks (e.g. worker heat stress)
• Researching potentially high risk areas to obtain site and industry-specific data for more precise application of consequence and likelihood criteria.
• Minimising residual risks by linking with asset managers and assessing the optimal scale and timing of adaptations.

The projects were thus able to target ‘Level 3’ for the credits, which contribute as much as 8 points towards their ‘Excellent’ ratings.