Eric Vanweydeveld

Eric Vanweydeveld is passionate about leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies to secure Australia’s future water supplies, particularly in regional and remote areas. He is also passionate about applying innovative solutions and he constantly strives for delivering results efficiently and cost-effectively to make a difference and to inspire positive change to promote sustainable water management. Eric is the Director of Aquanex Consulting. In 2019, Eric was named the Northern Territory (NT) Water Professional of the Year, in recognition of my commitment to excellence, leadership and collaboration in the water sector. And in 2018, he was named in one of Australia’s Most Innovative Engineers by Engineers Australia, for the innovation of containerized water treatment. This innovation is considered, by the water industry, transformational for remote Indigenous community water supply resilience as it significantly reduces costs.

Eric is a highly motivated water professional with over fifteen years’ experience across the water industry. He spent the last ten years working in remote Australia where he delivered several water project solutions for remote communities of the Northern Territory.

Eric has disseminated his Churchill Fellowship project findings widely through technical and conference presentations, radio interviews, publications, and ministerial briefings. He has also had the opportunity to develop a high-level draft strategic vision for the former NT Minister for Essential Services about long-term planning of water resource and supply systems and to enhance water security and reliability across remote communities by capitalising on financial, social, environmental, and technological opportunities.

Eric’s ambition is to combine real experiences and technical knowledge, gained on the ground from the remote context, with sound economics, policies and strategies to help decision-makers to clarify their objectives, address the right problems, and to leverage on opportunities to continuously improve. Eric’s long-term objective is to keep working in the remote/Indigenous space by “connecting the dots” between the state/territory level and the federal level. And to keep contributing to the development of resilient water supplies and working on closing the gap to improve life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to influence positive change.