Hundreds of thousands of words reviewed, revised and improved ...

If it's words you work with, Get it Write! can research, structure, rewrite, check and fix them. Here are some of our recent projects.

Future homes principles and adaptation guidance

Victoria's landmark 2023 Housing Statement expands the Future Homes program across Melbourne and the state. Future Homes provides four ready-made architectural designs developers can adapt to their site in line with the program's principles and adaptation guidance. We reviewed and rewrote the draft guidance to improve its narrative, flow and readability and minimise the amount of work a reader needs to do to understand and apply the guidance. ----- More -----

Seasonal watering plan 2023-24

This big (268-page) plan was developed as separate documents. First, we brought them together, standardised the styles and removed style irregularities. This saves the graphic artist going mad working out what's text, what's headings and what's something else. Then there's the word-by-word, careful reading and rewriting from start to finish to improve the writing where necessary and fix errors, mistakes, unintended duplication and inconsistencies. ----- More -----

Apartment Design Guidelines for Victoria

The 2020 Apartment Design Guidelines for Victoria adds four new chapters to the 2017 version of the guidelines, which had a highly stylised design. Ensuring the new material is consistent in all aspects with the old was a tricky editorial task needing close attention to detail. We reviewed the draft text and reworked it to ensure consistency with the original chapters and to make the more complex text and tables easily understandable. ----- More -----

Bushfire management strategies

Following on from our work developing strategic bushfire management plans in 2015, we were engaged to help develop the 2020 bushfire management strategies for Victoria's six regions. The aim was consistent structure and engaging expression across the whole series while allowing for regional differences. ----- More -----

Open space for everyone: Open space strategy for metropolitan Melbourne 2020

Open Space for Everyone is an ambitious, strategic framework for Melbourne's metropolitan open space network, and it includes implementation actions. We restructured and rewrote the first draft to clarify the links between elements of the framework's vision and goals and the actions. ----- More -----

Fuel management reports 2014-15 to 2020-21

Forest Fire Management Victoria report annually — by region and for Victoria — about the achievements of its fuel management program. Fuel management can be a contentious activity and we're delighted to help make the intended outcomes of fuel management activities and the metrics and narrative that report on achievements clear and understandable to the public. This is the seventh year we've edited the report. ----- More -----

Victorian State Emergency Management Plan

Arrangements and responsibilities for managing major emergencies before, during and after they occur are important to all Victorians, particularly in these bushfire- and pandemic-affected times. In 2018, the government decided to specify arrangements and responsibilities in the new State Emergency Management Plan, which Emergency Management Victoria engaged us to write. ----- More -----

Long-Term Water Resource Assessment for Southern Victoria

Victoria's first-ever long-term water resource assessment (LTWRA) was a complex, multi-year project to determine if water availability in Victoria has declined since the last reference period, if declines have been shared equally between the environment and consumptive uses and if waterway health has declined. We worked with the team of authors to revise the initial contents structure, prepare writing and editing rules and write and rewrite sections of text and to edit the whole report. We also wrote a summary narrative the communications team could use for key messages. ----- More -----

Safer Together monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework

Victoria's Safer Together program brings together agencies with land and fire responsibilities, their partners and the community to reduce bushfire risks to life, property and the environment. We reviewed the program's draft monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework to suggest improvements to the structure and to ensure consistency across terminology, evaluation questions, indicators, data sources and collection methods. We also rewrote text as required and edited, proofread and reviewed the page proofs of the final document. ----- More -----

Sustainable water strategies reviews

The Water Act 1989 requires periodic assessments of progress and reviews of the sustainable water strategies for Victoria's Central, Gippsland and Western regions. The strategies identify threats to water security and actions by water users, water corporations, catchment management authorities and others to address the threats over a 50-year planning horizon. We devised the structure for the three review/assessment reports and drafted the text for each report, working with the review team and the ministerial advisory committee to progress the reports through to publication. ----- More -----

Enhancing the grid: Victoria's Water Grid Partnership

Victoria's Water Grid Partnership — the extensive network of pipelines that transfers water around the state — has its own biennial report. We extensively restructured and rewrote the draft of the first biennial report, and we established a format that can be used for future reports. ----- More -----

Protecting the Waterways of the West discussion paper

Following the highly successful consultation process to protect the Yarra River (Birrarung) a few years ago, attention now turns to protecting the Waterways of the West: the Maribyrnong, Werribee and Lerderderg rivers and Moonie Ponds, Skeleton and Cherry creeks among them. We restructured and rewrote sections of the draft discussion paper to improve the flow, reduce duplication and make the story clearer and more compelling. ----- More -----

Better Apartments in Neighbourhoods discussion paper

The external design of an apartment development is something that concerns everyone: its green space, appearance, wind impacts, interface with the street and construction impacts affect residents, neighbours and the whole neighbourhood. The discussion paper sets out proposed changes to the planning rules about how new apartment developments affect the amenity of existing neighbourhoods. We provided structured and readable editing for the draft discussion paper to make the structure of each section and the explanations of the proposed changes to the planning rules clear and consistent. ----- More -----

Improving Stormwater Management Advisory Committee final report

The draft report was developed through a lengthy process of research, consultation and review, and we were engaged to write the report recommendations in simple English and to rewrite and reorganise the background, evidence and analysis on which each recommendation was based. Our brief was to clearly describe the problem, the policy intent and proposed amendments to the Victoria Planning Provisions to improve stormwater management; and to reduce complexity where possible. ----- More -----

Macedon Ranges Localised Planning Statement consultation publications

Our involvement with this project started with rewriting, editing and proofreading of the Localised Planning Statement Consultation Draft. After the consultations, we worked with the project team to restructure, rewrite, edit and proofread the consultation findings report, to ensure responses were reported consistently and to maximise readability. ----- More -----

Councils and Emergencies consultation publications

Our work with the Councils and Emergencies Project began with restructuring and editing of the Councils and emergencies directions paper. It continued with restructuring, rewriting and editing of the Councils and emergencies consultation report and then of the Councils and emergencies position paper that resulted from the consultation process. We also provided advice to make the graphics and the tabular layout of the responsibilities and actions clear and easy to understand. ----- More -----

Victorian Cycling Strategy

We extensively rewrote and reorganised the draft strategy to tightly focus it on its key message: the Victorian Government’s intention to increase the number, frequency and diversity of Victorians cycling for transport by investing in a safer, lower-stress, better-connected network, prioritising strategic cycling corridors; and by making cycling a more-inclusive experience. ----- More -----

Reflections 2016-17

For the second year, we rewrote, edited and proofread the drafts of this interesting, informative and beautifully photographed annual review of environmental watering: what it is, how it benefits the environment and communities, and what happened with environmental water entitlements: the legal rights to access a share of water to improve the environmental values and health of our rivers, wetlands and floodplains, and the plants and animals that rely on them. ----- More -----

Protecting the Yarra River (Birrarung) consultation publications

We're proud to have provided editing, proofreading and page proof review services for the major consultation documents for the first Australian Bill to designate a river and its public land as one living, integrated, natural entity for protection and improvement. ----- More -----

Building Regulations Sunset Review consultation publications

This was a large (150,000 word), three-part document developed by three organisations. We cleaned up the styling and in the short time available managed a polished edit of the whole statement to fix style and grammar errors. We also wrote an overview to the statement, the consultation website text, a submission form and fact sheets for use during consultations on the revised regulations. ----- More -----

Tech schools vision statement and guide for school communities

We researched and wrote a statement of vision and principles to guide implementation of the Victorian Government’s Tech School initiative, a $125 million program to build 10 leading-edge tech schools bringing together schools, TAFEs, universities and industry to connect students with their futures. The statement was used as the basis for Tech Schools: a guide for your school community. ----- More -----

Democracy in Geelong discussion paper

After the Victorian Parliament dismissed the Greater Geelong City Council in April 2016, there was a concerted effort to consult with the community about a new electoral structure for the city. This meant clarifying and explaining to the community the various electoral options and the interactions between them. We edited, restructured and developed infographics for this background paper, to support the consultation process. ----- More -----

Strategic bushfire management plans

We worked with teams of experts to develop a template and rules for world-first strategic bushfire management plans for Victoria's bushfire risk landscapes, then worked with teams from all seven landscapes to adapt the template to suit their particular landscape and way of identifying and mitigating bushfire risk. ----- More -----