Women in Engineering, Nadine Story

Nadine Story

Nadine Story is a Team Leader Sewer Network at Urban Utilities. She has a Bachelor of Engineering in Environmental Engineering and a Masters of Complex Project Management , both from the University of Southern Queensland.

Hello, I’m Nadine Story and I’m proud to lead the Sewer Isolations team at Urban Utilities.

Every year, there are well over 500 sewer maintenance and new connection jobs within the Urban Utilities’ service territory that require an isolation plan. These ‘flow control plans’ ensure the network is isolated in a way that is safe for our workers and the environment, minimises impact on residents and businesses, and is economical. We also schedule jobs to ensure there are no conflicts in the network and, where possible, we leverage jobs to be more cost-effective. My team develops nearly all flow control and contingency plans, which keeps them very busy.

Working as a sewer engineer is not the most obvious career choice, so how did I end up in this field? Sixteen years ago, after graduating from high school in Germany (my home country), I delayed my university studies to take a gap year with a friend in Australia. Not long after our arrival, we found ourselves working at Story Fresh – a grower and processor of leafy vegetables in Toowoomba. The name is no co-incidence, as years later, I married into the lettuce family!

I extended the gap year by a few months and in 2007 I returned to Australia to commence my Bachelor of Environmental Engineering studies at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. During my studies, I worked in the lettuce processing factory and a few years later as an undergrad engineer for the Toowoomba Regional Council. After graduating from university, I was accepted into the full-time Council Graduate Program, which laid a strong foundation for my career. As part of the program, I rotated through the Stormwater, Water & Wastewater planning departments to expand my skills and, fortuitously, my fulltime tenure came shortly after the global financial crisis which saw demand for engineers drop significantly.

In 2013, we relocated to Brisbane with our newborn daughter, Grace, and the cat to pursue my husband’s career opportunities. Following maternity leave, I continued to commute with Grace to Toowoomba every week for work, but after eight months, the travel was becoming increasingly difficult. I decided to stay in Brisbane full time to finish my Masters in Complex Project Management and then reevaluate career options. In 2014, I was offered the role of Operations Engineer at Urban Utilities, which was akin to winning a lottery ticket! Our family could finally stay together – permanently – in Brisbane. In 2016, our second daughter, Lexa, joined the Story clan.

Now, after nearly seven years at Urban Utilities, my team and I find ourselves at the forefront of Brisbane’s most exciting sewerage projects. Most recently, the team was involved in the connection of the new Centenary Highway rising main in Kenmore, the connection for the new Queens Wharf development at North Quay, the new Grey Street Pump Station and the condition assessment of Brisbane’s biggest rising mains from Eagle Farm Pump Station SP10 to Luggage

Large Lampe Plug fully inflated at the workshop. Crews getting ready for a confined space entry. Setting up of winch to hold back a large plug at North Quay.

Point Treatment Plant.

Flow control plans are not just about closing valves and isolating pumps stations. We need to have comprehensive understanding of the network when we are developing isolation methodologies. We consider time to overflow, what happens to other parts of the network (sometimes many kilometres away), work around discharge patterns of major customers, consider how rainfall affects the storage and what diversion options we may have available to reduce the need for tankering. Tankering is often associated with the requirement of traffic permits, noise and odours, which means we select the lowest impact discharge locations and time windows.

One way to isolate parts of the gravity sewer is using plugs. Urban Utilities owns plugs that can isolate sewers between 100 mm and 2.8 m in diameter. Whilst smaller plugs are relatively easy to control, large plugs are in a completely different league. They often require back ropes, winches and jacks to hold them in place – a set-up that easily takes hours to complete. Over the years, the crew has developed lots of fascinating tricks to expedite the process. For example, they found that a simple plastic bag is the best way to float a rope from one maintenance hole to the next. That’s innovation in action!

In the city, we have several penstock and knifegate valves, which we refer to as sewer doors. We can back up more flows behind a sewer door compared to using plugs, because they are designed to withstand a much higher-pressure head. Some of these sewer doors require thousands of turns to operate, which can take 45 minutes to shut just one valve.

Just as important as selecting the right isolation methodology is how we return the network back to service. For example, on trunk sewers, we must ensure we return the flow at a rate that allows air to expel from the system or we risk launching maintenance hole covers onto roads and footpaths as the pressure builds. Similarly, when returning several pump stations, we require our Control Room to slowly feed the flows to the treatment plants to ensure they don’t go into dry weather bypass mode, which would create a significant environmental problem.

Since most large sewer jobs happen at night and underground, some of them can be ongoing for years and still remain largely unnoticed. As part of the Kingsford Smith Drive upgrade, Urban Utilities had to reline 5.5 km of the up to DN1575 S1 Main Sewer under one of Brisbane’s busiest roads, which was a mammoth task and took seven years to complete. Noel Ralph, Urban Utilities’ Wastewater System Specialist and I recently presented the challenges of this project at the QldWater Essentials Webinar.

The last metres right in front of Brisbane’s biggest pump station, SP10, still need to be condition assessed and renovated by hand, which means tube entry for the crews just meters from the 7300 L/s capable pumps, whilst holding back 70% of the River City’s flows and lots of people at designated locations to ensure a minimum freeboard remains. A similar isolation – the “Megashut” – was successfully performed in October 2020 to conduct CCTV of the pipe. Urban Utilities is currently working on the installation of a large penstock sewer door right outside of the pump station on Kingsford Smith Drive to enable an easier flow control. Who would have thought sewer works could be this exciting?