The power of our longstanding consultancy lies in a team with a background spanning various geological surveys, exploration, mining and agricultural companies. The vast well of expertise on hand enables us to use advanced technology and innovation to deliver successful outcomes for our customers.
Pennington Scott specialises in the exploration and development of water resources, providing exemplary, cost-effective and diverse groundwater solutions on time and on budget.
As “clean water” specialists, Pennington Scott has addressed an array of project needs throughout Australia, South-East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Far East.
Exploration and development of water resources, providing exemplary, cost-effective and diverse groundwater solutions on time and on budget.
We specialise in the exploration and development of water resources, providing exemplary, cost-effective and diverse groundwater solutions on time and on budget.
A number of our staff have more than 30 years’ experience in hydrogeology, geophysics, and numerical modelling.
Pennington Scott exemplifies an experienced consultancy workforce. We prioritise both knowledge, and industry expertise. Three quarters of Pennington Scott staff possess postgraduate qualification. With average staff experience surpassing ten years, and in certain cases three decades, we optimise customer access to professional excellence.
Addressing your needs from such an informed perspective means we offer solutions that are innovative, affordable, and streamlined to your project in contrast to reliance on basic templates. Our independent business model allows us to work collaboratively while seamlessly adopting leading-edge initiatives in our field.
Pennington Scott is primarily a groundwater exploration and development company working predominantly in the mining and agricultural sectors. We provide a full hydrogeological consulting service from water resource, approvals, water supply, dewatering, groundwater exploration, borefield development, and groundwater training; In addition, we also operate a fully equipped well field services division capable of bore pump installation, borefield maintenance and hydraulic bore testing.
We integrate high-performing and reliable technology through the use of remote bore monitoring and automation, remote hydraulic pump test automation, and computer-based automated pump test analyses.
Pennington Scott works from a project’s concept to closure. We offer a wide range of consultancy and in-field services. Our organisational capacity works to customer advantage, enabling an optimised final product at affordable conditions. With a motivated commitment to premium quality project performance, Pennington Scott retains long-term customer relationships. A selection of our recent projects include:
Since 2000, Pennington Scott has been at the forefront of applying electromagnetic (AEM) techniques to help explore and develop large scale buried palaeochannel resources throughout Australia. In 2018 Pennington Scott successfully located and developed a palaeochannel water supply borefield for one of Australia’s newest and largest Greenfields gold projects, the 8.5 million tonne per annum Gruyere Gold Mine, on the edge of the remote Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia.
From a hydrogeological perspective, it’s hard to think of a more difficult feasibility challenge than to mine a deposit hosted deep within cavernous limestone in an area with an extreme monsoonal climate. However, the Sorby Hills lead-silver-zinc deposit, hosted in the karstic Sorby Dolomite in the tropical Kimberly region of Western Australia is also located right in the middle of one of Australia’s largest planned irrigation projects, the Ord River Irrigation Area Stage 2 (ORIA).
In 2021, Pennington Scott released an optimised pre-feasibility study that drew together decades of disparate water studies into a credible holistic life of mine adaptive dewatering feasibility, plus a water management strategy that aligned the needs of the Sorby Hills Project with those of the environment and ORIA.
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In 2021 Pennington Scott completed a hydrogeology investigation drilling and modelling program underpinning the water supply and approvals for Western Australia’s largest integrated cattle-feeding facility at Koojan Downs near Moora, Western Australia. This investigation defined a previously unrecognised confined aquifer resource in the region.
The project will ultimately agist premium cattle using world best practice intensive 155 hectare fodder irrigation and effluent management.
In 2021, the Minderoo Foundation opened a state-of-the-art marine research hub in Exmouth, Western Australia, in the heart of the UNESCO-listed Ningaloo Coast World Heritage site, to provide urgently needed science to address the impacts on ocean health and biodiversity from overfishing, habitat degradation, climate change and ingestion of plastics by marine life.
Pennington Scott proudly designed and installed the marine water intake and reinjection infrastructure to provide for a continuous supply of aquarium water within very fine water quality and temperature tolerances to support this important project.
Running a cattle business is always a challenge in Australia’s cycles of unpredictable drought and flooding rain. Pennington Scott designed and obtained approval for Minderoo’s first managed aquifer recharge (MAR) weir on the Ashburton River. Since its construction in 2011, CSIRO estimates the weir has doubled the seasonally available groundwater resources that would otherwise be available without the weir.
Pennington Scott has recently obtained approvals to develop a further ten MAR weirs to grow enough fodder to sustain the breeding herd and drought-proof the station.
Public swimming pools try to maintain the pool water at a comfortable temperature and many pools used to close for the winter because it was too expensive to artificially heat the pools.
Pennington Scott has successfully installed geothermal groundwater systems for the Cannington Leisureplex and the Riverton Leisureplex providing a cost-efficient alternative to traditional gas heating at a fraction of the cost. The “open loop” system at both sites comprises two deep-water bores:
Pennington Scott has helped Northern Star deliver a life-of-mine operational water development and management strategy for the Carosue Dam Operation (CDO), which would optimise future process and potable water development to support a doubling of ROM throughput to 6 Mtpa. CDO is a significant gold operation comprising a remote gold processing plant, accommodation village and several satellite mines scatter over three mining districts which cover many square kilometres of hypersaline salt lake environment. Pennington Scott’s brief has been to deliver an optimised cost/benefit water exploration and development strategy which considers the regional hydrogeological prospectivity of potential resources; the cost of pipeline over increasing distance; reagent costs verses process water salinity; together with the cost of social, environmental and waste water management.
The vast majority of Western Australia’s most-productive fresh groundwater resources occur in the Perth Sedimentary Basin, beneath the Swan Coastal Plain on the western seaboard of Western Australia, stretching over 800 kilometres from Augusta in the south to Geraldton in the north.
The collective technical knowledge of the Perth Basin is contained largely within three comprehensive bulletins published by the State Government, Pennington Scott produced the Southern Perth Basin Hydrogeological Bulletin in 2009 and Northern Perth Basin Hydrogeological Bulletin in 2017. A copy of the latter bulletin can be downloaded from https://www.water.wa.gov.au/water-topics/groundwater/northern-perth-basin/
