Focus July 2020

Protecting Precious Coastlines The Seychelles suffered severe degradation of its coral reefs after a number of mass coral bleaching events that left these fragile ecosystems devastated. The subsequent damage to the resilience of the country’s coasts resulted in increased coastal erosion and flooding of local communities. A rising sea level caused by climate change would only exacerbate the situation even further and current attempts to restore the reefs simply weren’t sufficient to counteract the effects. Faced with this significant environmental challenge, the World Bank Group appointed us to develop a strategy that would help the Government of Seychelles to implement and finance large-scale restoration of its coral reefs and improve the resilience of its coasts. Our team of specialists worked closely with economists, the University of the Seychelles and two NGOs with coral restoration expertise to cover every aspect of the strategy. Funded through the “Resilience to Climate Change” program of the Global Facility of Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), upscaling of spatial scales was critical to the strategy’s success, including geographic coverage for the larger populated islands of the Seychelles and increasing the extent of individual restoration initiatives. Our holistic approach combined economics, ecology and coastal management with a strong focus on teaming with local partners. We developed a framework for evaluating the risks and opportunities for restoration in an environmental context and used this to prioritise restoration sites and activities. We also developed an economic guidance framework which was applied to two sites as case studies, following which we prepared a detailed business case for large-scale coral reef restoration that highlighted the opportunities to take advantage of sustainable financing options. Thanks to our work on the project, the Seychelles will be the first country in the world to have a national coral reef restoration strategy. The Nuyina is Australia’s game-changing new icebreaking research and supply vessel (RSV), intended to support Australian bases on Antarctica. Capable of deploying helicopters, landing barges and amphibious trucks to support resupply operations, and with a large moon pool for launching and retrieving sampling equipment and remotely operated vehicles, it’s the world-leader for its class and provides a cutting-edge platform for marine science research in both sea ice and open water. RSV Nuyina represents an important and significant expansion of Australia’s Antarctic and Southern Ocean capabilities. So important, in fact, that the Australian government invested nearly $2 billion to cover the design, build and 30-year operational and maintenance lifespan of the vessel - the single biggest investment in the history of Australia’s Antarctic Program. As the Prime Contractors for this prestigious project, Serco turned to us for our decades of engineering expertise and we’ve been instrumental in ensuring milestone achievements and capability delivery to-date thanks to our support through design, build and transition into service. From key maintenance engineering advice to programmatic and systems engineering requirements, we’ve used our embedded resources and our local and international capabilities to help overcome the build and transition into service of this large and complex sea platform that presented numerous unique and bespoke requirements. We’re proud that our support of the RSV Nuyina has helped to provide Australia with a key enabler and new, game-changing capability for the future of its Antarctic program for decades to come. Breaking Ice (and Records) 36 37