Our Mission

To empower our clients in progressing towards Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Luke Bambery | Director

Photo credit: Julian Tung

Luke Bambery Consulting (LBC) is a small consulting firm based in Melbourne Australia which focuses on drinking water supply, management and governance. Luke founded the firm in 2022 to expand the capacity in which he could support clients. Luke is the principal consultant and personally oversees every project either personally in the field or remotely. He also routinely calls on the support of his network of consultants, research partners and in-country colleagues in The Pacific, Southern Africa and Europe.

Luke brings over a decade of experience in mechanical engineering, initially in the engineering design and construction of heating and cooling water water systems for commercial buildings in Melbourne. In 2016, he moved to Vanuatu and became a regular contributor to the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Sector through engagements with locally based NGOs, and has since supported water supply and management across 5 of Vanuatu's 6 provinces, including providing emergency WASH support during tropical cyclones, volcanic eruptions, flood events, and drought.

LBC’s main areas of focus are as follows:

    • Hydraulic engineering

    • Hydro-geology services

    • Project management for development

    • Field based water quality monitoring

    • Inclusive sanitation infrastructure design and construction

    • Sanitation behaviour change

    • Governance support for universal sanitation provision

    • Gendered service provision

    • Menstrual Health and Hygiene (MHH) focused design

    • Disability inclusive infrastructure design

    • Inclusive WASH research

    • Promoting enabling environments

    • School WASH facility design

    • WASH education

    • Water Safety Planning for Schools

    • Drinking Water Safety and Security Planning (DWSSP) and Climate Resilient Water Safety Planning (CR-WSP)

    • Climate change and resilience planning for community managed water supplies

Photo credit: Takaindisa Sanangurai

Whilst maintaining a specialty in piped water system design, LBC has expanded into aspects of civil and environmental engineering like well development and other groundwater extraction solutions as well as solar pumping, elevated storage and other aspects of rural water supply. The Pacific region is experiencing climate change caused disturbances in small water systems on a scale never seen before, and climate resilient design is front and center for Luke and the LBC team.

Any WASH engineer will have dealt with the challenges of sustainable infrastructure. Luke was an early adopter of community Water Safety Planning (WSP) in the Pacific and has supported the development of the methodology at national, sub-national, and community level in The Pacific and Zimbabwe. In Vanuatu WSP is the key to unlocking sustainable WASH development in the face of limited government service provision.

Since 2020, Luke has worked closely with the Government of Vanuatu Ministry of Education and Training, strengthening systems for Vanuatu’s schools’ WASH resilience. LBC has developed a Water Safety Planning approach tailored for Vanuatu’s schools as well as strengthening minimum standards for school WASH facilities with the development of the Vanuatu School WASH Facilities Guide which highlights contextually appropriate designs and locally driven solutions like the Bamboo Tippy Tap (below).