Borumba Pumped Hydro Project
Client: Queensland Hydro
About the project
The proposed Borumba Pumped Hydro Project is a long-duration pumped hydro energy storage system being developed by Queensland Hydro at Lake Borumba and surrounding areas located in between Imbil, west of the Sunshine Coast, and Jimna in the Somerset region.
As a multi-decade and intergenerational asset, the Borumba Project can provide long-duration energy storage that can support Queensland’s energy transition.
It is being designed to capture and store excess energy and then provide this stored energy back into the electricity grid for use by Queensland homes and businesses when it is needed.
Queensland Hydro is currently undertaking early works onsite, technical investigations, project planning, design and community work while important regulatory approvals are progressed.
Approach
Whitelight Communications, in partnership with Communikate, provided strategic communication, engagement and social performance support services to Queensland Hydro’s Borumba team and its delivery partners during its planning, approvals and early mobilisation phase from June 2024 to May 2025.
We provided support across several aspects of the engagement program.
Governance and better practice improvements including:
- Providing communication and engagement advice to project leadership, regularly contributing to Project governance forums
- Planning and facilitating two team building and strategy workshops
- Developing engagement strategies to manage Project issues affecting community including road safety, traffic and haulage
- Refining processes and materials to support proposed exploratory works including contract inclusions and minimum stakeholder engagement requirements for contractors.
Early and exploratory works planning and engagement, including:
- Developing communications and engagement plans for exploratory works approvals and proposed exploratory works delivery.
- Reviewing and contributing to key Project management plans for the exploratory works phase including the draft Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA), Road Management Plan (RMP) and Social Assessment and Management Plan (SAMP).
- Preparing priority stakeholder relationship plans for key stakeholders and engaging with project stakeholders around tailored mitigation measures.
- Engaging with the delivery team to identify, avoid or manage impacts of Project works on stakeholders such as haulage, traffic and transport. This included participating in workshops, design reviews, site inspections, and multi-criteria assessments.
- Preparing and helping distribute site works notifications.
- Facilitating or attending community information events in Jimna and Imbil and recommending alternative formats for community events to respond to stakeholder feedback.
- Helping investigate and respond to referred stakeholder complaints and enquiries
Proposed main works planning and design input including:
- Providing input on social impact assessments to inform aspects of the proposed Project design including haulage routes, road safety improvements, electricity easements, workers’ camps, and park n ride facilities.
Outcomes
Whitelight Communications became an integral part of the Borumba Pumped Hydro Project Engagement team during the period we supported the project. Outcomes attributable to our involvement include:
- Leveraging decades of mega-infrastructure project experience, industry knowledge and examples of engagement best practice across several state jurisdictions
- Deepening key internal relationships with delivery, approvals, environmental, safety and land liaison teams
- Influencing key design and delivery approaches to ensure community and stakeholder impacts were identified and avoided where possible, or effectively mitigated
- Liaising with highly impacted project stakeholders and the broader community to improve transparency and trust
- Building team capability through mentoring, coaching and workload planning
