Regulatory Approvals and Certifications

Mark Clifford Shirley graduated, as a civil engineer, from the Queensland University of Technology in 1975. Since then he has worked for an Engineering Consultant, a State Government Department and Engineering Contractors involved in the water treatment and swimming pool industry. Currently Mark is operating as an independent specialist engineering consultant. The specialist areas include water and waste water treatment facilities, swimming pools, water retaining structure design, pressure vessel design and design of light industrial structures. His experience in both the consulting and contracting areas has given Mark a practical outlook and the ability to provide trouble shooting services in the above fields.

The majority of the work currently being undertaken is based on the following specialist areas.

• Swimming Pools
• Water treatment schemes
• Waste water treatment schemes

The common thread in these areas is a highly developed experience base in water quality treatment systems and the design and construction of the civil / structural components of the systems. This has lead to detailed design and construction procedures for water retaining structures.

Involvement in pool design dates from 1976 with the design of a 50m pool for the Beaudesert Shire Council. The pool was successfully constructed in a black soil floodplain. Some 28 years later the pool is still functional with the wet deck circulation system remaining level and fully operational. The treatment plant was designed on conservative filtration rates consistent with experience gained in the public health sector and remains operational to this day.

Around the same period a series of 25m pools were design for the Queensland Education Department and represents the beginning of a long association with this particular sector of the industry. Over the years Mark has been involved in the development of design and construction techniques for both the pools shells and water treatment facilities. Development of a specification for the water treatment facilities has resulted in a defacto standard that has been widely copied for both Education Department pools and municipal pools for Local Authorities. During this period most forms of pool design have been investigated with design development for cast in formwork pools, block work pools, prefabricated panel pools and sprayed concrete pools.

Over the last 18 years the pool designs have fallen into two categories. The traditional cast in formwork pool being reserved for fully tiled pools that require a high degree of dimensional accuracy for the more discerning client base. This form of construction is generally more expensive; however it does offer a greater degree of control for concrete quality and placement tolerances. For general purpose pools with applied finishes where cost control is of the essence design and construction techniques have been developed for sprayed concrete construction.

This has resulted in a highly successful series pools for the Queensland Education Department. A recent example of this is the 25m by 8 lane pool complex built for Coorparoo State School and a community pool constructed at Boulia in Queensland’s remote outback.

The design has also been modified to be built on piled foundations were differential settlement is identified as a problem. An example of this is a recently completed pool at Casurina on the Tweed Shire Coast. A further development of this design was the construction of two 20m lap pools on deep piled foundations for a residential unit development at Bulimba adjacent to the Brisbane River.

As mentioned previously Mark’s experience also includes the detailed design and construction techniques for water quality systems. Mark has been instrumental in supporting the continued development of specifications for filtration systems for the Queensland Education Department pools, the development of the filtration systems for the lagoons at Brisbane’s Southbank Parklands and the major sea water lagoon facilities at Seaworld on the Gold Coast. The success of designs based on these specifications is based on a valued approach to the selection of filter rates and other hydraulic considerations. Filter design is based on considerations and experience that have been gained in the wider public health arena of municipal water supply where quality is paramount. The approach has proven successful in the hundreds of pools operated by the Queensland Education Department. Recently a paper summarizing these parameters was published in a leading aquatic magazine.