The Port of Hastings Project

Project Overview

The ocean port in Melbourne, located in the state of Victoria, Australia has projected demand will exceed capacity by about 2030. Planners in Victoria have reacted by forming the Port of Hastings Corporation (PoHC), which is to construct and manage the Port of Hastings, located 50 kilometers from Melbourne. The Port of Hastings will be connected to Melbourne by new rail lines. Rail traffic, land acquisition, port construction and operation will have considerable social and environmental sustainability impact, so much so that opposition to the new port has appeared. To varying degrees, the opposition feels that expansion is probably not justified, when the full negative impacts are considered, and that their opinions are basically being politely considered but in fact ignored. They also question the demand projections, which appear to be based mostly on guesswork and a bias toward growth. The PoHC, meanwhile, is trying to move the project forward rapidly, and has so far succeeded.

Glenn MacMillan of Victoria (an environmentalist and progressive) has asked Thwink.org to help him apply the concepts of Analytical Activism to the problem. A conference call on February 20, 2007 between Glenn, Michael Hollcraft, and Jack Harich focused on defining the problem, as the first step of the System Improvement Process. Rather than attempt to solve the Port of Hastings problem, the group has elevated the project to solving similar problems in Australia. Exactly what this means is under development.

Discussion

The forum thread on this project is here.

Documents

Problem Definition - This defines the problem using the standard SIP format. This is the first step of SIP.

Meeting Notes for January 20, 2007 - Our first meeting, by conference call. It covered introductions, experimentation, and step 1 of SIP.

Meeting Notes for January 27, 2007 - Our second phone meeting. It covered mostly discussion of strategy maps.