Restoration of the Upper Murrumbidgee River (RUMR) Monitoring and Science Projects – A Joint Initiative by the ACT and NSW Governments

This REOI is an initiative of the ACT and NSW governments through the “RUMR Program Delivery Team” to call for organisations to submit project proposals across 7 science and monitoring themes to deliver on the work plans and more broadly support achievement of the long-term outcomes set in the RUMR Strategy.

Scope:

This REOI is an initiative from the RUMR Program Delivery Team to call for organisations to submit project proposals across 7 science and monitoring themes to deliver on the work plans and more broadly support achievement of the long-term outcomes set in the Strategy.

Organisations can submit proposals for science and monitoring projects that align with one or more themes. They may propose one or multiple projects under each theme. Projects that span across-jurisdictional boundaries are encouraged.

This REOI is stage one of a potential two stage process. In legal terms, the Territory reserves the right to shortlist organisations from this REOI process to participate in any stage 2 Request for Quote (RFQ) process. The Territory may utilise the information obtained in the REOI process to refine the Statement of Requirements (SOR) for the purposes of the Stage 2 process. However, if an Applicant’s proposal aligns with the SOR, then the Territory reserves the right to move to contract negotiations or will short list organisations to participate in a stage 2 process.

Responses to this REOI will be shared with NSW Government and may be used by the NSW Government to help them procure specific projects.

Project specific requirements

Theme 1 – Management intervention and long-term condition monitoring

Overall objective (must):

Projects aim to:

• evaluate the effectiveness of RUMR on ground interventions against intended ecological objectives, and

• develop intervention and monitoring knowledge base that supports long-term outcomes of adaptive management for the UMR.

Supporting objectives (may include but not limited to):

Desktop review and analysis

- Collate historic data to support the project including records of river health indicators

- Collate information on past intervention and monitoring practises

- Determine outcomes of prior interventions and ecological condition drivers and trends in the UMR

- Collate and review the documentation on RUMR on-ground interventions in the ACT and/or NSW

- Build a GIS map and register of all RUMR on-ground intervention sites including information on intervention types (e.g. fencing, weed removal, erosion controls), and links to supporting documentation (e.g. sketches, program plans)

- Explore opportunities to expand learnings through the monitoring of past interventions where relevant.

Conceptualisation

- Develop site and intervention specific conceptual workflows that articulate local environment dynamics before, during and post RUMR interventions. Determine relevant river system health indicators of change caused by the interventions to evaluate performance in meeting the desired outcome.

- Prioritise interventions in the work plans for monitoring following section 3.2 in the JPP (Excel template tool is provided in Attachment 4 for consideration).

- Design intervention monitoring program for a set of interventions according to BACI principles and in consideration with the constraints (incl. budget and progress of on ground interventions).

Theme 2 – Values of the UMR (data collation, analysis and mapping)

Overall objective (must):

• Projects aim to develop a consistent, up to date and complete synthesis of information on UMR health and condition and develop a robust geospatial database of river health indicators (water quality, flora, fauna, sediments, morphology). Cultural and social significance values would also be considered, but the focus is on ecological and environmental values.

• The geodatabase will be a key input for value localisation across RUMR projects and help prioritise on ground interventions (e.g., in-stream aquatic habitat restoration works).

• Maps will play a key role in communication to the public on RUMR projects.

• These projects are data collation and GIS intensive.

• No monitoring is required for this project.

• A specialist gap analysis is expected.

Supporting objectives (may include but not limited to):

• Collate, curate and review existing data relevant to river health monitoring (past, current and future). The Applicant should outline in their Proposal the information that they will be collating and reviewing for inclusion in the geodatabase.

• Determine indicators of the health of the system including sediments, water quality, fauna and flora.

• Gap analysis and recommendations to bridge the monitoring gap (where, what and when – details on monitoring method are not required).

• Produce curated geodatabase on UMR health and condition – including historical river health indicators.

• Produce documented maps of the health and condition of the river.

• Produce high quality publication-ready products.