Advice and Approvals

ALS provides practical advice about the management frameworks and approval processes that protect Aboriginal heritage and how they relate to your project. Our advice can assist with scoping requirements, approval time frames, budgetary considerations, predictive modeling, identifying key stakeholders and engagement processes.Our advice is designed with three goals in mind:

  • Ensure Project compliance with Aboriginal cultural heritage legislation
  • Maximise the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage on the project
  • Minimise project costs

We provide advice on simple projects all the way through to multi-year large scale infrastructure projects.Our Aboriginal cultural heritage advice and approvals services include:

  • Land Access Negotiations
  • Aboriginal Stakeholder consultation, engagement and facilitation
  • Scoping, design and budget of fieldwork programs for approvals
  • Preparation of and submission of government permits, reports and submissions
  • Aboriginal cultural heritage policy development
  • Project audits and previous work reviews
  • Advice on establishment of cultural heritage management systems and processes

Surveys, Excavations and Cultural Value Assessments

ALS provides the full suite of services required to navigate the cultural heritage assessment and approval process. This includes:

  • Desktop researchLiaising and coordinating with Traditional Owner representatives and knowledge holders
  • Archeological and/or ethnographic surveys of the proposed area to be impacted in partnership with local Traditional Owners
  • Logistics coordination
  • GIS Mapping and analysis
  • Aerial surveys through drone footage and helicopter surveys
  • On-site and interactive heritage inductions
  • Site condition audits
  • Production of formal reports and recommendations for the relevant statutory authorities or representative bodies
  • Archeological excavations
  • Cultural salvage
  • Ground disturbance monitoring in partnership with local Traditional Owners

Cultural Landscape Mapping

We know that heritage protection and management isn’t just about facilitating approvals. As such, we advocate for a focus on the significance of the broader cultural landscape as essential to truly understanding, protecting and celebrating Aboriginal heritage values.

How do we do this? We undertake cultural landscape mapping to assist clients to determine and promote Aboriginal heritage values as part of their day-to-day operations.

The practice of Aboriginal heritage protection and management across Australia is generally moving toward a better understanding of the cultural landscape and defining heritage value in terms of this landscape. Aboriginal heritage value is not necessarily just about an artefact or a physical structure or point on a map – it’s also about the environmental health of the surrounding area, the way people interact with an area, their connection to it (in the traditional and contemporary context) and the stories associated with it.

Desktop Assessments and Cultural Heritage Management Plans

ALS provides desktop studies for Aboriginal cultural heritage. Desktop assessments summarise heritage values, identify gaps in knowledge and provide advice on what legislation or codes are relevant to their management. Desktop assessments are critical in providing the data to reduce costs of potential fieldwork programs that may be required as part of an approval process.Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Management plans outline the protocols and procedures needed to navigate the obligations identified in early advice or desktop assessments. Depending on the specific requirements, ALS can produce a range of desktopassessment, risk-analysis and due diligence tools, such as:

  • Desktop assessments and gap analysis
  • Predictive modelling for archaeological site location
  • Significance assessment reviews
  • Management and interpretation plans
  • Heritage inductions and procedures

ALS also offers additional support for larger, complex infrastructure projects where Aboriginal cultural heritage approval requirements may require extended surveys and assessments over a large area, sometimes over a number of years. In these cases, we can also serve as an outsourced function for cultural heritage planning and approvals to assist the client with timelines, budgeting, coordination, logistics and project management.