Saga of the slips: Government ticks galore

We have our final planning approval for the reconstruction of WARC's deck.

The MRA was first cab off the rank, giving us planning approval back in June - they had our application for 50 days. 

The Swan River Trust (DPAW) had our application for six months - April until October. 

And the Department of Aboriginal Affairs had our Section 18 application from July 3 until November 30, when the Minister signed it. We received it on December 2... one day shy of five months.

Both the SRT/DPAW and DAA gave us explanations for the hold up - SRT was going through restructure following amalgamation with Parks and Wildlife, DAA couldn't get a quorum to approve the minutes of the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee in October. 

The compounded outcome of all these delays is that we are, sadly, behind on our idea of having the deck built by the end of 2015. We have requested an extension on our Heritage grant to match our new construction timeframe.

The next steps: design

Planning approvals mean we can get down to the final nitty-gritty of designing the deck, including colour, accessories, step-width, lights, etc. 

I (PBR) will be calling a meeting of stakeholders within the fortnight to go over this. If you feel you have a contribution to make on the final design, please ask for an invite to the meeting via president@warowingclub.org.

A couple of caveats:

• We cannot have a floating deck, so don't ask. We have investigated and exhausted this option - three companies were asked to quote for a floating deck, all said they could not figure out how to make it work.
• The deck cannot be insane colours or have advertising on it, as it must comply with the heritage look and feel of the club.
• If you can't make it to the meeting, contribute ideas here

Some of the things we'll be considering is how to best get speedboats up the ramp (looking at a central slope to allow a dinghy trolley), LED lighting on the edge, "lollypops" with capacity to light up, colour and materials. 

Keep an eye on the Facebook page for meeting details. This final design will then go to the City of Perth for building approval, Heritage for design approval, and the Swan River Trust for approval (with a Contruction Environmental Management Plan).

The next steps: construction

We have an ideal but also tentative timeframe of mid-March for construction. This, of course, depends on tides, funding and sub-contractor availability. I hope we might be ready to go by the time the raffle winds up - we could draw the raffle to mark the start of construction.

This timeframe has been made possible because of the time change from the Lord Mayor's Cup. Previously we would have been in the midst of our corporate regatta in mid-March. Happily this is not the case and I think demonstrates we moved to the Head of the Swan concept at exactly the right time.

I appreciate this was a bit of a dense read. I presume only those truly interested will get stuck into it.