Risk to Remediation 2025

Newcastle 8 - 12 September 2025

crcCARE's 5th Risk to Remediation (R2R) training course has been developed especially for early career professionals (up to 8 years’ experience) who manage, regulate, investigate, remediate, or are impacted by contaminated sites.

Global thinking –local action. R2R provides participants with the cutting-edge skills to manage and remediate contaminated sites across Australia and the rest of the world. This course has been developed in response to the critical need to build capacity to address the growing global contamination crisis. While technical lessons can be learned through the study of past projects, an advantage of this course will be the semi-structured discussions, problem-solving and personal interactions that allow participants to consider the many facets of modern contaminant site assessment and remedial design. The course will also discuss aspects of sustainable low-impact remediation approaches, climate change considerations, policy and regulatory matters, and economic considerations – all within the context of gaining and maintaining a social licence to operate.

Regardless of their current level of expertise, R2R provides participants with enhanced skills, knowledge, networks, and confidence to manage even the most challenging sites and help them become leaders in the global remediation industry.

The course can be used towards continuing professional development (CPD) points (up to 45 hours)

Expert instruction

In-depth instruction by, and interaction with, leading environmental experts from academia, consulting, and government from across Australia and the rest of the world.

Distinguished Laureate Professor Ravi Naidu, CEO & Managing Director crcCARE will officially open the R2R 2025 training course and will give the scene-setting Plenary lecture.

• Professor Paul Nathanail, LQM & Nottingham Trent University, UK
• Scott Warner, BBJ Group, California, USA
• Ross McFarland, AECOM, Australia
• Ian Gregson, GHD, Australia
• Belinda Goldsworthy, EnRisk, Australia
• Alvin Lal, crcCARE, Australia
• Joyleen Christensen, Senior Lecturer, University of Newcastle NSW

Course Coordinator

• Ratin Mathur, crcCARE

Content overview

Our team of experts provide participants with a comprehensive insight into policy, chemistry, toxicology, hydrogeology, site assessment, conceptual site modelling, qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, remediation technologies and strategies, and risk communication relating to contaminated land and hazardous waste sites.

Qualitative and quantitative risk assessment based on the conceptual site model will be practised and the effect of different legal contexts explored. The role and cost/benefit of modern advanced analytical chemistry (e.g. GCxGC, Time of Flight Mass Spectroscopy, physiologically based bio-accessibility testing, isotope analysis, asbestos fibre release, TOP Assay) will be explored.

Participants will receive detailed technical information on the best-available remediation technologies, design and selection criteria, remediation implementation and verification strategies, and field monitoring.

Participants will be offered optional computer-based evening sessions. These sessions will provide participants with an understanding of how an individual model works, its underpinnings, and how to apply it to site-specific scenarios. As a result, participants will develop strong skills in the application and use of leading-edge software to assess, characterise and manage contaminated sites. Models being discussed include:

• Contaminant groundwater modelling
• Vapour intrusion modelling
• Environmental Data Management

Networking

Participants will have numerous structured and unstructured networking opportunities to build connections and relationships with national and international leaders in the field and with their fellow participants. These include leaders from academia, industry, and government.

Materials

Participants will receive:

• Downloadable course Handbook/ handouts on USB. Please bring your laptop for daily sessions.
• Certificate of Completion.
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credit up to 45 hours**
• Contaminated sites tour
• An Invitation to join the R2R alumni Linkedin group

Course outline

Day 1: Monday, 8-9-2025

Policy and Contaminants

• A global perspective on overview of contaminated and hazardous waste site management, challenges and solutions
• Legal context and policy: International key case studies
• Legal context and policy: USA Key Case Study

• Legal Context and Policy: Australia
• Principles of Contaminant Hydrogeology
• Environmental Chemistry of Organic and Inorganic Contaminants and Treatments
• The development, use, and role of the conceptual site model
• Q&A and general discussions

Day 2: Tuesday, 9-9-2025

Site Characterisation

• A global perspective on overview of contaminated and hazardous waste site management, challenge and solutions

• Soil, Water and Soil Gas Sampling Tools and Techniques
• Assessment of Site Contamination

• "Fireside Chat" - Open discussion with Industry Leaders on the Status of Contaminated Land Assessment, Remediation and Management
• Groundwater sampling aspects

• Data analyses for Environmental Practitioners
• Application of Machine Learning in the assessment of site contamination
• Q&A and general discussions
• Contaminated Land in the Movies: A guided viewing of a popular movie-"A Civil Action"

Day 3: Wednesday, 10-9-2025

Risk Assessment

• Toxicology
• Site-Specific Human Health Risk Assessment

• Detailed Quantitative Risk Assessment
• Ecological Risk Assessment
• Remediation Action Plan Development
• Equipment, Techniques, Demonstration and Poster presentation

Day 4: Thursday, 11-9-2025

Remediation

• Remediation approaches and technologies ( till morning tea break)
• Site Tour by a charter bus ( Start at 11:00 AM, Return at 6:00 PM)

Day 5: Friday, 12-9-2025

Remediation continued .....

• Remediation in practice
• Group exercise - Develop CSM, identify remedial goals, select potential remedies, Design remedies and assess long-term performance ....
• Environmental Risk Communication
• Public Participation in Decision Making
• Question Time to Panel members - What's Next
• Panelist's thoughts on contaminated land management over the coming decade then take the opportunity to pose questions to the panel.
• Closing ceremony, including a personal souvenir photograph of receiving certificate
• Closing Remark by Distinguished Laureate Professor Ravi Naidu.
  

Evening Sessions

Day 1:

No session, Free time for delegates for professional networking at their leisure

Day 2:

Contaminated Land in the Movies: A guided viewing of a popular movie on environmental issues - A Civil Action, followed by discussions of its messaging

Day 3:

Equipment and Techniques Demonstration, and poster presentation
- Groundwater equipment and tools
- crcCARE VOC tools and equipment
- PIDs and Soil gas Sampling equipment
- Computer modelling – crcCARE software demo (Vapour intrusion modelling, IndoorCARE Environmental Data Management, Risk modelling- raCARE risk assessment tool, Mobile App software
- Poster Presentation

Day 4:

Contaminated Sites Tour
(By a charter bus from the venue)

For pre-reading: 1-page Site Notes will be provided for the following nine sites

1. BHP Mayfield (proposed energy hub over remediated site)
2. Hunter River Remediation (completed sediment remediation- drive by)
3. Kooragang Island (industrial waste disposal precinct with commercial redevelopment)
4. Delta EMD (drive by – former industrial site remediated for concrete operations – difficult to see but will drive past anyway)
5. Hamilton Gasworks – capped site – proposed commercial/industrial reuse
6. Waratah gasworks – recently completed remediation, sadly including demolition of some residential structures
7. RZM Mineral Sands – containment cell for major road construction – drive by only
8. Truegain – remedial works (on-site materials handling and offoff-siteite disposal)
9. Hydro–containment cell – completed on-site containment cell – great viewing platform as the sun sets on the former aluminium smelter remediated site

Day 5:

- Graduation ceremony- Certificate distribution
- Closing remarks by Program Chair - Distinguished Laureate Professor Ravi Naidu

Presenters profiles

Paul Nathanail, Managing Director, Land Quality Management Ltd, UK

Paul is a Chartered Geologist and Specialist in Land Condition (SiLC, source broadly akin to an Auditor) whose consultancy, research and training in all aspects of risk-based contaminated land management and brownfield redevelopment. He has chaired the UK National Brownfield Forum, and the board of directors of SiLC Register and is an active member of several ALGA special interest groups.

Paul and his team developed the UK's most widely used soil screening values, pioneered the use of bioaccessibility in human health risk assessment, and explored the risk posed by fugitive nanoparticles injected into source zones to remediate polluted groundwater. He is the lead author of the UK standard guides on asbestos in soil and PFAS in soil and water. He created the Dose-Response Roadmaps to discern when risks to human health are dangerously high. Paul led the working that wrote ISO AS 18504:2022 on sustainable remediation.

He is a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University, an Honorary Research Fellow at the British Geological Survey and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham.

He has worked on value engineering panels and provided intelligent client functions on major projects. He has consulted in Brazil, Cyprus, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Nepal, Bosnia, South Africa… and Australia.

Scott Warner, Principal Hydrogeologist / Pacific Basin Business Leader, BBJ Group, California, USA

Scott Warner has worked for over 35 years as a consulting hydrogeologist and remediation practitioner with a focus on designing and implementing innovative groundwater clean-up measures. He was a designer for the first full-scale permeable reactive barrier for in situ groundwater remediation – a system that for nearly 30 years continues to perform in removing groundwater contaminants using passive geochemical methods. His work has involved environmental sites throughout North America, Europe and Australia and he has delivered numerous presentations and training courses on environmental remediation in numerous geographies for private, government and academic audiences. Scott also is a doctoral researcher with the University of Newcastle where his focus is on developing an understanding of the climatic impact to groundwater remedy design. In addition to his affiliation with the University of Newcastle, Scott has a MS in Geology from Indiana University, Bloomington (USA) and a BS in Engineering Geology from the University of California, Los Angeles (USA).

Ross McFarland, Chief Environmental Scientist- ANZ , AECOM Australia

Ross is AECOM’s Chief Environmental Scientist for ANZ. He is a Certified Contaminated Land Practitioner (EIANZ SC41077) as well as national Asbestos Removalist Certification. Ross is a certified contaminated land auditor in NSW, ACT, NT, and WA, and works in all jurisdictions of Australia and New Zealand. He has more than 40 years local, national and international environmental chemistry experience, focused on risk-based contaminated sites management, especially for emerging contaminants such as ASBestos-IN-Soil (ASBINS) and PFAS.

Ross was the Australian consultant industry representative for both 1999 and 2013 Assessment of Site Contamination National Environment Protection Measure (ASC NEPM). The ASC NEPM is the nationally agreed technical framework for contaminated sites assessment work. To address a national guidance gap for remediation of contaminated sites, in 2010 Ross was asked to Chair the National Remediation Framework (NRF) Committee. In 2019 the NRF was published, consisting of twenty-four national remediation guidelines.

Ross has been involved with ASBINS since 1999 including being co-author of the 2000 ACLCA Code of Practice for ASBINS, the 2009 WA DoH Guidelines for Asbestos in soil and the ASBINS amendments to the 2013 (ASC) NEPM. Ross maintains a special interest in international developments in ASBINS assessment and remediation.

Most recently, Ross has been directly involved in the application of “real-time” asbestos-in-air monitoring techniques, with direct use in Activity-Based Survey (ABS) at critical defence capability operations to allow safe maintenance and management to proceed.

Ian Gregson, Technical Director, Northern NSW Contamination Assessment & Remediation, GHD, Australia

Ian is a Technical Director with GHD’s Contamination Assessment and Remediation group, and has over 40 years’ experience in a range of engineering and environmental fields. Ian is a Certified Contaminated Land Practitioner and accredited Site Auditor in NSW, Qld, ACT and formerly in Victoria.

Ian has extensive experience in contamination assessment, remediation or management strategies, both from a consulting and an auditor’s perspective. Projects have involved site investigations, environmental monitoring and assessment and remediation strategies for landfills and contaminated sites, including soil, groundwater and vapour contamination, hazardous materials (e.g. asbestos) and removal of infrastructure. Ian has also been involved in a number of policy and guideline review processes for the NSW EPA and is currently on the NSW Environmental Trust’s Environmental Hazards subcommittee.

In particular, Ian has a long-standing interest in asbestos in soils, and was the lead author of ALGA’s Management of Asbestos-in-Soil (ASBINS) Draft Position Paper in 2018. Most recently, Ian is part of a Round Table group representing ACLCA, ALGA, AIOH, AHCA and FAMANZ which is offering support to NSW EPA in implementing recommendations from the Office of Chief Scientist & Engineer (OCSE) report ‘Management of asbestos in recovered fines and recovered materials for beneficial reuse in NSW’.

Belinda Goldsworthy, Principal, EnRisk, Australia

Belinda Goldsworthy has more than 20 years’ of experience in the contaminated sites industry and specialises in human health and ecological risk assessments. Belinda has assisted with the development of national contaminated land and risk assessment guidance for Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. She has extensive experience providing human health and ecological risk assessment training for health and environmental regulators, industry bodies and universities. Belinda has performed over 150 health risk assessments that evaluated human exposure to a range of chemicals and media. Belinda has in-depth knowledge and experience conducting complex ecological risk assessments for marine, freshwater and terrestrial habitats; and derives site-specific guidelines protective of human health and ecology. Belinda is approved by the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to provide technical support to Accredited Contaminated Land Auditors for risk assessment projects and has provided her professional opinion and risk assessment expertise for numerous risk assessment projects in all states of Australia. Belinda is a registrant of the Australian College of Toxicology and Risk Assessment (ACTRA).

Alvin Lal, Research Director crcCARE, Australia

Alvin Lal is a hydrogeologist at the Global Centre for Environmental Remediation and crcCARE at the University of Newcastle, Australia. With over eight years of research and academic teaching experience, Alvin is a leading expert in AI applications in environmental assessment, groundwater modelling, management, and sustainable resource utilization. Originally from Fiji, he completed his PhD at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, where his thesis focused on developing and applying groundwater models and management tools for complex hydrological systems.

Alvin is passionate about leveraging AI and predictive analytics for environmental protection and sustainable decision-making. He also has extensive expertise in 3D groundwater numerical modelling (both finite element and finite difference methods), groundwater quality monitoring and assessment, and designing monitoring networks. His research and innovations in these areas have made significant contributions to the field. In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious James Cook University Dean’s Award for Research Excellence.

Before joining the University of Newcastle, Alvin was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He also served as a lecturer at the University of the South Pacific (USP) from 2020 to 2021, where he developed the civil engineering program and helped establish hydrology, water resources, and coastal engineering courses.

Currently, he is involved in numerous international groundwater modelling and remediation projects, collaborating with partners in Australia, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the USA, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Kiribati. He has published several journal articles and book chapters, and frequently presents his work at global conferences. Alvin is also dedicated to mentoring students worldwide, co-supervising several PhD candidates, and fostering the next generation of environmental scientists.

Joyleen Christensen, Senior Lecturer, Screen and Cultural Studies UoN, Australia

Joyleen Christensen is a Senior Lecturer in Screen, Media, Cultural Studies, and Literature in the Pathways and Academic Learning Support Centre at the University of Newcastle's Central Coast campus.

Joyleen is the recipient of many teaching and learning support excellence awards, including an OLT Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, two Vice-Chancellor's Awards for Teaching Excellence and Learning Support, a Vice-Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, and the inaugural English Language & Foundation Studies Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

Joyleen's research focuses on issues related to her chosen disciplines of film, media, cultural studies, and literature, as well as her interest in pedagogy and support strategies centred on enabling education. Her doctoral thesis - 'Where in the world is Andy Lau? Putting the 'popular' back into studies of Hong Kong popular entertainment' - examined the production and consumption of contemporary celebrity against significant social and historical movements in regional and transnational cultural relations over the last thirty years. In 2015, she was the recipient of the ELFSC Research Excellence Award and took up a position as a Visiting Scholar with the Centre for Cinema Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Registration

• Early bird registration fees AUD 2490 (ex GST)
• Standard registration fees AUD 2890 (ex GST)
• Late registration fees AUD 3290 (ex GST)
• Student fees AUD 1000 (ex GST)

Notes :
10% discount for employees of CRC CARE Participant organisations
10% discount for three or more participants from the same organisation
Students have to provide their current student ID to obtain the discounted rates

Registration fees are inclusive of the evening sessions i.e movie night, equipment, techniques demonstration and site trip.

To obtain a discount code and student registration fees please contact Ratin Mathur (ratin.mathur@crccare.com / +61 437224158).

Refund policy

Attendees can receive a refund up to 7 days before the event start date. An Admin fee of $100 will apply.

Catering

The course will be fully catered including morning and afternoon tea, and lunch.

Venue

Newcastle City Hall 290, King Street, Newcastle NSW 2300

Hotel accommodations near to venue are -

We have special discounted rates available for the delegates who will attend the Risk to Remediation Winter School 2025. Please see below the list of hotels, discount codes/ discounts being offered to delegates.

Please note that the delegates have to arrange accommodation at their own cost and to liaise directly with the hotel of their choice. These hotels are within a walkable distance (up to 1.0 km) from the City Hall.

This information is to facilitate your comfortable stay in Newcastle. However, delegates are free to choose accommodation of their choice and budget anywhere in Newcastle.

Little National Hotels
44 Honeysuckle Dr, Newcastle NSW 2300
Phone: 02 40919000
https://littlenationalhotel.com.au/newcastle/

Promo code – EVENT2
To book the accommodation please go online and add the above code in the promo section to access the discounted rates. The discount is up to 20% off on the prevailing rates.
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Rydges Newcastle
Wharf Rd &, Merewether St, Newcastle NSW 2300
Phone: 02 49075000

To access your special rates please follow the following steps-

- Visit www.rydges.com
- Select Rydges Newcastle, enter your required dates* and number of guests staying and click ‘GO’
- Click ‘I have a code’
- In the ‘Corporate ID’ field enter your booking code: RYDNTL15
- Click ‘UPDATE’
- Your special rates (15% discount on Best flexible online rates) will appear on the rates screen
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Mercure Newcastle
12 Steel Street, Newcastle West NSW 2302
Phone: 02 40866300
Website: Please click here
15% discount, Discount code: 2506CRCCAR
- Group Name: Risk To Remediation 2025
- Booking stay date from: 7th September 2025
- Booking stay date until: 13th September 2025
- Rate: 15% off Best Available Rate

How to make a booking
To make a booking, delegates will need to contact Mercure reservations team by calling 02 4086 6300 and selecting Option 2 to process their booking.

Please note the discount is not redeemable online or via email

Terms
· No rooms will be held, rates are subject to availability at the time of booking
· A credit card is required to secure each reservation
· Cancellation policy: Bookings cancelled within 21 days from arrival will incur a cancellation fee of 100%
· Minimum length of stay required is two nights

Note: Holiday Inn Express and Quest Newcastle are a few other options near the venue.

R2R 2025 Course Host and Sponsor

crcCARE (www.crccare.com )

crcCARE is a partnership of organisations dedicated to developing new ways of dealing with and preventing contamination of soil, water, and air including solid and liquid waste management. We focus Australia’s foremost expertise and resources on this issue and develop close links with research partners at the cutting edge in this field around the world.