Meet our Operations Planning Team

Over the years you have quite likely become accustomed to the courtesy e-mails and phone calls you receive from our phenomenal operations planning team. These five people are responsible for planning all the work, responding to emergency call outs, and letting customers know when we will be on site. These five people have the character traits of tenacity, mental dexterity, and patience. For you as customers, I would like to introduce them to you so you can put a face to the voice.

Nada Bashori

Nada has been with us for over four years and knows our business well. She is kind and patient. Nada moved here from Iraq and is the most dynamic and glamorous grandmother I know.

Lucie Carpenter

Lucie is in her second year with us and has recently completed our Leadership Programme – JOLT – under the direction of Wade Jackson. Lucie hails from Czechoslovakia and looks after her two beautiful children when she is not working.

William Clarke

When our planning team needed another planner, we advertised internally. We were lucky enough to have one of our Team Leaders apply for the role. William has become an asset to this team because of his site knowledge and his rapport with the field crew.

Cat Woollams

Cat was voted our Peoples Choice Employee of the year last year. She is passionate about getting work done. Her planning is meticulous and careful, and her customer service is unparalleled.

Michelle Buckingham

Michelle, otherwise known as Molly, leads this team of wonderful individuals. She has been in the business for over six years, and she has weaved her way through accounts, sales and now she leads the operations team with accuracy and passion.

 

These five people make sure work is planned for the customers and the team in the field. We thank them for their efforts. May I ask all our customers to be patient with these people as they aim to satisfy your requirements, while working at the mercy of the substantial weather events we have experienced in 2023.

Kiwi Property Group awarded a Stormwater Responsible Badge

Dutton Stormwater were very pleased to award Kiwi Property Group at Sylvia Park with a Stormwater Responsible Badge.

It gives us great pleasure to be able to recognise the commitment it takes from companies such as Kiwi Property Group to maintain their devices on a regular basis. The peace of mind that comes with knowing that when winter comes we have done everything we can to help these systems run smoothly is priceless.

Tracy and Grant presented this beautiful pauwa inlaid award to Karlene Haddock the Facilities Manager and Stuart Tomlinson, the Facilities Lead, at their last meeting – with the digital logo to be utilised by their Marketing team.

Christchurch Stormwater Maintenance

Dutton Stormwater Maintenance’s Christchurch HQ is at 20 Raymond Ave, in Bromley. We are so proud to be working in the beautiful Garden City, and have a fantastic crew based in Christchurch, along with our 10 tonne capacity vacuum truck truck, ‘David’.

A Stormwater Maintenance Company in Christchurch 

The opening of our new Stormwater Servicing Company branch in Christchurch was the culmination of big dreams, months of planning, and some serious mahi. Our team have been busy getting stuck into work, as well as finding some time to get acquainted with the local area, beautiful scenery, and fantastic people.

The team started off by servicing some of our amazing new customers’ sites, such as RD Petroleum and Fire and Emergency and we are very excited to see what the future has in store.

Our experienced Field Operations Supervisor, Marlon Quiban, heads up the branch and the Stormwater Maintenance operations.

Marlon said, “I have loved the move down to Christchurch, everyone has been so welcoming, and I am excited to make Christchurch my home”.

  • Lyndon will be operating our truck and learning the world of Stormwater Maintenance.
  • Isaac is an engineering student who we are supporting in Christchurch with a few days’ work per week.
  • We have one of our experienced drivers doing two-week stints in Christchurch to cover demand.

We feel privileged to be able to take this bold step to providing stormwater services in Christchurch – and are eager to help keep more of New Zealand’s beautiful waterways clean.

Sleeping Bear

We’re excited to formally introduce our newest truck – Sleeping Bear. Why Sleeping Bear? The blower is manufactured in Traverse City, Michigan by a company called NVE (National Vacuum Equipment). Traverse City is famous for Sleeping Bear Cove. This truck will sleep and when it starts to suck it eats silt and debris – like a bear in a honeypot!

The Big Five benefits that this truck delivers to our customers are:

  1. Powerful suction – Sleeping Bear sucks at 940 CFM (Cubic Foot per Minute) or 26 618 Litres per minute.
  2. We can waterblast and vacuum at the same time which keeps our customer’s sites cleaner.
  3. The side-suction makes access convenient for trickier sites, as you can see in the picture of Rupinder vacuuming a cess pit at Bunnings in Wellington.
  4. Quick and easy Pump maintenance
  5. 10000L Capacity means fewer disposal trips.

Thank you to the crew at Waimea for doing such a fantastic job delivering this truck for us.

Rain garden maintenance

Over the 15 years of being in Stormwater Maintenance, we have noticed a shift in stormwater treatment options. When our business began, stormwater treatment consisted of Sand filter, Upflo filter and StormFilters™. These devices are fantastic, and we love maintaining them.

However many businesses have shifted towards an even greener option and in the last 5 years we have seen the installation of many Raingardens and Filterra® treating stormwater runoff. As stormwater specialists we absolutely do service Raingardens and Filterra® installations.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Grant, our Business Development Manager, to get your raingarden on a regular maintenance programme which will ensure its continuing effectiveness.

 

Light at the end of the… tunnels! Removing 117.6T of waste

Dutton Stormwater is not afraid of tackling challenging jobs and from April through to June 2021, we embarked on a massive one, by cleaning the three soakage tunnels running under central Auckland.

The task to clean 265m of underground tunnels was extremely demanding – not only physically, but logistically, and health & safety wise. Each day the crew had to dig, shovel and vacuum sediment, that in some areas was up to 1.5m deep, leaving them little more than crawling space to move.

  1. MELVILLE TUNNEL
    • 62m
    • 270 hours,
    • 18,400kgs waste removed
  1. KING GEORGE TUNNEL
    • 171m
    • 758.5 hours,
    • 84,500kgs waste removed
  1. GILLIES TUNNEL
    • 32m
    • 48 hours,
    • 14,720 kgs  of waste removed

In total the job took more than 1076.5 hours to complete and a whopping 117.62 tonnes of sediment was removed.

Total amount of stormwater waste that we removed and was kept out of the ocean from Jan 2021 to November 2021 was 1455 tonnes – equal to approximately 50 humpback whales.

It’s official – The Stormwater Responsible Badge is here

To acknowledge and publicly recognise the commitment of our customers to Responsible Stormwater Management, and to raise awareness of the importance of stormwater system maintenance, we have created the Stormwater Responsible badge.

This badge will be awarded to customers who demonstrate responsible stormwater practices by regularly maintaining their stormwater systems. Companies can then use this to show their own customers and the community they are doing their part to minimise contamination of our waterways.

To qualify, customers of Dutton Stormwater must have performed regular stormwater maintenance on their existing devices for at least two years, and/or have committed to two year’s scheduled maintenance on all stormwater devices going forward.

To discuss further, or if you already qualify and would like to be awarded the badge, please email andrea@duttonstormwater.co.nz.

St Mary’s Primary School presentation

As part of our initiative to educate our community and increase awareness of how important stormwater maintenance is to preserving clean waterways, the Dutton Stormwater team visited St Marys Primary School.

Around 50 children got to hear our Director Ed Dutton explain what our role is in helping protect the waterways and environment around New Zealand, then our crew demonstrated a Cess Pit service with the Vacuum Truck.

It’s always refreshing speaking with children and watching curious minds at work. It was great to see how quickly the students grasped why it is important not to drop rocks or rubbish in a Cess Pit. We found the trip very worthwhile, with our time well invested in these future custodians of Auckland.

Ed is looking forward to visiting more customer schools this winter and meeting more young people with a desire to look after our planet.

Stormwater 2021 Conference

Dutton Stormwater were proud to be the Conference Partner Sponsor at this great event in Tauranga, lead by Water New Zealand. Our team enjoyed meeting professionals across the Stormwater industry including some great new contacts and our fantastic customers.

As one of only two Stormwater Maintenance companies amongst many manufacturers, innovators, consultants and Council teams, we focused on creating greater awareness around the importance of maintaining Stormwater Devices regularly so they can perform as the manufacturers intended, and effectively protect our environment.

Our booth showcased our model Vacuum Truck which was a popular talking point. We were impressed with the efforts of our in-house Engineer and Designer, Richard Strang, who designed and built the 1:7 scale working model from scratch in just three weeks. The truck was displayed on a custom-made stand which together with our booth was developed by our friends at Big Ideas. It showcased pumping of the water from cesspits and stormwater drains to the truck. This was an outstanding event, and we look forward to meeting everyone again next year in Christchurch.

Smart Cess Pit Maintenance

What is a cess pit?

Cess pits are the unsung heroes of the stormwater world! Everything flows to the cess pits. Cess pits are primarily used for onsite containment, collection and treatment. A cess pit or catch pit is a stormwater treatment device comprised of three key elements – a grate, a small sediment trap, and a siphon on the outlet.

We’ve gathered some information on how cess pits work for you to help illustrate why great cess pit maintenance is essential for effective performance and protection of our waterways.

How does a cess pit work?

    1. A cess pit collects rainwater through the grate.
    2. The solid material the water has picked up on the way to the pit will fall out of suspension and settle down to collect on the bottom of the trap.
    3. The clean water will drain through the siphon and out into the stormwater network.

Who owns a cess pit and whose responsibility is it to maintain it?

    1. Cess pits on the road usually belong to the council. They will have a contractor who will be responsible for maintaining them, which may be us.
    2. Cess pits on a private car park or building will belong to the land owner and they will be responsible for making sure the cess pit is maintained by a stormwater maintenance company.

Why should I ensure regular cess pit maintenance?

There are two really great reasons to ensure cess pit maintenance is regular and professionally done.

    1. To avoid the risk of blockages and flooding. Noone wants storm water backing up and spilling over because of a blocked cess pit.
    2. To ensure sediment doesn’t build up until it is high enough to get stirred up by stormwater flow and transferred out of the pit back into the stormwater network… and eventually into our ocean.

When should I get a company to maintain my cess pits?

    1. Cess pits need to be serviced annually at a minimum to ensure they are clean enough to function effectively and to prevent overflow.
    2. We pride ourselves on working with property owners to ensure they have the optimum frequency of maintenance for the servicing – for the environment; and for the customer’s budget.

What should I do if I think my cess pits need maintenance, or I don’t know when they were last serviced?

It’s really simple – just call us to come and have a look at them and we will give you a free, no-obligation quote.

Please do not try to do this yourself. There are thousands of bacteria living on the lids and inside them, which can pose a serious health risk to anyone apart from trained stormwater maintenance professionals. Also, the lids are designed to be extremely heavy and one needs to know how to lift the lid, and have the correct equipment.

How can I do more?

To improve on the performance of a well maintained cess pit, and avoid unforseeable issues caused by rubbish, we can install a LittaTrap inside your cess pits. As the name suggests, a LittaTrap works to keep all litter out of the pit and out of the stormwater network, helping ensure that your stormwater system remains high functioning and clear, releasing only clean water to our local harbours.

How is a Cess Pit cleaned?

Our team use a Vacuum truck (or our low height vacuum trailer if required) to suck all the sludge and sediment out of the cess pit, along with all the particles and pollutants in the sediment – leaving only clean water in the cess pit.

Cess Pit before maintenance

Vacuuming the Cess Pit
Cleaned Cess Pit – note lower water level