This webinar is for ALGIM Council / CCO members only.
Flood and landslip risk is now one of the most pressing challenges facing councils across Aotearoa. But as hazards evolve, so must the way we understand, monitor and manage them.
This 90-minute session brings together experienced practitioners working at the front line of recovery, engineering and environmental monitoring to explore how councils are responding to changing risk.
The first 45 minutes will provide practical insight into how flood and slope hazards are being understood today — including the role of monitoring networks, catchment modelling, geotechnical assessment and planning frameworks.
The second half of the session opens up to a 45-minute live Q&A with the expert panel, featuring:
● Darren de Klerk – Director Infrastructure Delivery, Hastings District Council
● Damian Young – Founder & Managing Director, Zealandia Consulting
● Ben Westgate – Senior Engineering Geologist, Tonkin + Taylor
● Guy Macpherson – Sales Lead, Adroit (Spark NZ)
The panel will answer questions from participants and discuss how councils can move from reactive hazard response to more proactive resilience planning.
For councils navigating recovery, climate pressures, and increasing infrastructure risk, this session offers a rare opportunity to hear directly from practitioners working across engineering, monitoring and local government leadership.
About the Panellists:
Darren de Klerk
Director of Infrastructure Delivery
Hastings District Council
Darren de Klerk is the Director of Infrastructure Delivery at Hastings District Council, where he is leading teams delivery recovery efforts across infrastructure assets following Cyclone Gabrielle. His experience spans large‑scale silt and debris recovery, bridge rebuilds, transport recovery, catchment and stream management in Havelock North, and the practical application of real‑time monitoring, modelling and engineering advice to prioritise works and reduce risk under high uncertainty. Darren brings a delivery‑focused perspective on recovery, and how data and monitoring actually influence and support day‑to‑day decisions, investment trade‑offs and community outcomes during recovery and resilience planning.
Damian Young
Founder & Director
Zealandia Consulting
Damian Young is an environmental leader with more than 28 years’ experience applying engineering and science to deliver sustainable outcomes for land, water and communities. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Zealandia Consulting, a progressive practice focused on innovative, collaborative projects in water quality, biodiversity, carbon management and catchment restoration.
Over his career, Damian has founded and grown several successful environmental consultancies, including co‑founding Morphum Environmental and Seditrol New Zealand. He has advised a wide range of clients across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, providing strategic guidance on integrated catchment management, geospatial analysis, options assessment, water‑sensitive urban design and sustainability strategy.
Damian is also an active contributor to the environmental profession through publications, conference presentations and leadership roles in professional networks. He brings a mission‑driven, systems perspective to resilience and climate adaptation, with a strong focus on practical solutions that protect and enhance the natural environment
Ben Westgate
Senior Engineering Geologist
Tonkin + Taylor
Ben Westgate is a principal engineering geologist with over 20 years’ experience across Europe and Eurasia through Russia to Australasia.
He began his career in academic research at Exeter University with a PhD in coastal instability, regression and erosion before moving into hands‑on ground engineering.
Work really started with a major Civil Works programme to stabilise over 800 houses above a historic Limestone mine in Bath, UK. In that role, he helped develop innovative monitoring products and visualisation tools that supported the local council to present the projects progress and funding decisions. These visuals even made it to the Houses of Parliament!
Following the completion of the project, he moved to an international mining consultancy in Cardiff, South Wales. He undertook financial due diligence on mining assets, along with Concept to Feasibility design, mine site operational support and optimisation. Project locations ranged from the heat of the Sahara Desert in Mauritanian in summer to the Arctic conditions of northern Finland in winter. In this role, Ben worked closely with data and software specialists to create geomechanical data‑collation workflows that reduced design and analysis time from weeks to days. This demonstrating the value in collecting data more efficiently and structured, to deliver smarter semi-automated processes that created more sustainable, resilient and cost-efficient engineering outcomes.
Since relocating to Aotearoa eight years ago, Ben has been with Tonkin + Taylor Group, where he continues to focus on practical innovation in geohazard and slope stability assessment. He has driven improvements in field practice and digital logging to lift data quality and now concentrates on optimising remote data capture through IoT and real‑time monitoring systems.
Guy Macpherson
Adroit Sales Lead
Adroit / Spark NZ
Guy Macpherson is the Sales Lead for Adroit, a Spark NZ subsidiary specialising in real‑time environmental monitoring solutions. With 20+ years’ experience in the technology sector, he has spent the past eight years helping to grow the Adroit business across New Zealand’s environmental, worksite, and infrastructure sectors.
Guy’s industry experience is broad – from aquaculture through to construction, quarrying, councils and infrastructure resilience, giving him a practical, cross‑sector view of how real‑time data is actually used on the ground. He works closely with customers and the wider Adroit team to design and implement monitoring solutions that use environmental sensors and telemetry devices to transmit data via cellular and satellite networks to a secure cloud platform for visualisation and analytics to support operational decisions, compliance, and risk management.
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