About

Australian communities are growing more aware of water. Degraded aquatic ecosystems and recent changes in climate and water availability mean more people are valuing waterways and wetlands and demanding more sustainable communities.

DesignFlow contributes to designs that uncover water as a defining and fundamental part of planning urban communities and supporting landscapes. DesignFlow is a team of water professionals that provide urban water solutions with the client focus of a small practice.

 

We design community outcomes. We challenge the norm and strive to deliver projects that not only function well but are attractive and contribute positively to the urban fabric.

We partner with leading landscape architects and urban designers and use our complementary skills to deliver iconic projects.

 

 

What we do

DesignFlow delivers sustainable water systems to new urban areas and the public realm. Our solutions add to sustainable developments and the community greater enjoyment of water

our projects

Our services

DesignFlow is based in Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia and its services include:

  • Water sensitive urban design
  • Water management strategies
  • Designing wetlands, bio-retention, and waterways
  • Stormwater harvesting and water recycling
  • Flood and water quality modeling
  • Lake management
  • Policy, guidelines, and training

Our team

Shaun Leinster

Shaun has extensive expertise in stormwater and flood management, waterway management, environmental engineering, design, and asset management. His forte is designing innovative water sensitive urban design elements by coordinating collaborative relationships with urban designers, landscape architects, and engineers.

Shaun is highly skilled at applying mathematical models to simulate hydrologic, hydraulic, water balance, and water quality processes. His skills have helped projects throughout Australia and overseas. Shaun has co-authored policy, framework, and guideline material underpinning stormwater management, particularly in Queensland. He trains practitioners through the Healthy Waterways–Water by Design program.

Robin Allison

Rob understands the value of water in community spaces. He successfully collaborates with urban and landscape designers to integrate sustainable water solutions within the constraints of urban communities. Rob is highly skilled in urban stormwater management in integrating and delivering water sensitive urban design in residential and prominent public spaces.

His experience includes urban development and redevelopment projects at many scales, wetland and Bioretention designs, stormwater harvesting, water policy development, and research and publication on stormwater treatment devices. He has delivered many industry seminars and training courses. Rob’s expertise covers investigation, planning, design, construction supervision, and project management of water infrastructure

Ralph Williams

Ralph has a Masters in hydrology and water resources and 25+ years’ experience in Australia and overseas. His speciality is developing water management strategies, stormwater treatment and harvesting, hydrologic and hydraulic modelling, and detail design.

Ralph has supervised major civil projects and has extensive engineering design experience in hydraulic, hydrologic, hydrogeologic and geotechnical fields, and computer modelling. He takes a practical approach to projects and has the design and construction knowledge to apply his skills to make sure strategies, plans and designs are easily implemented and well-considered.

Ralph enjoys applying his highly technical design skills to helping develop community-orientated outcomes as part of broader water sensitive urban design objective

Nic Smith

Nic’s expertise is in stormwater, flooding, and water sensitive urban design. He’s worked in multidisciplinary teams for the private and public sectors for more than 15 years. Nic appreciates the diversity of water-related issues facing urban areas.

His experience ranges from concept site planning to detailed design, hydraulic and water quality modeling, and construction supervision of stormwater systems as part of both new and retrofit urban development projects. Niches also contributed to many guidelines and capacity building programs for local government and the stormwater industry.

Andrew Cook

Andrew has 15+ years’ experience in urban lakes, waterways, and stormwater management and design. He has practical skills in designing and delivering vegetated stormwater treatment systems, including bioretention and constructed wetlands.

Andrew has managed and provided technical input to a range of stormwater, waterway, and catchment management projects. His focus is on resolving practical designs that integrate water and ecology back into our urban environments

Jason Sonneman

Jase has expertise in aquatic ecology, water resource assessment, and management. He has 25+years’ experience working on the ecology and protection of urban waterways. Jase is particularly passionate about water plants and integrating WSUD infrastructure within the urban environment.

Jase’s experience includes developing integrated approaches to urban water management and innovatively using WSUD concepts within urban development projects. This includes-designing stormwater treatment and harvesting systems such as wetlands and bio-retention systems. He has specialist skills in ecosystem assessment and management, environmental impact assessment, and analysis of environmental data

Georgie Wettenhall

Georgie enjoys the challenge of developing technically sound water management solutions that complement the overall desires for a site such as aesthetics, usability, and service provision.

Georgie has helped develop WSUD within Australia through authoring many technical guidelines and presenting industry training courses and conferences. She has 15+ years’ experience in urban water management. Georgie is a founding director of Design Flow and now works casually at DesignFlow while teaching

Michael Mathers

Mick manages and delivers-design drafting. He is deeply experienced in preparing detailed design drawings and digital terrain modelling as well as conceptual imagery. He has prepared concept, functional and detailed design plans for any stormwater treatment and harvesting systems across Australia. Mick’s background in landscape architecture combined with a keen eye for detail and effective communication-delivers high quality and efficient documentation

Simon Young

Simon specialises in civil and structural engineering design and drafting and has more than 25 years’ experience working for developers, engineering consultants, and local and state governments. Simon has an associate diploma in civil engineering, certificate in computer-aided drafting and is an associate member of the Institute of Engineers Australia.