Commercial Services

The Descend Group, formed in 1979, incorporates Descend Underwater Training Centre, Descend Diver Education and Descend Hydrostat. Our base, strategically located in Albury on the main corridor between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, services Southern New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory.

From a contracting stand point Descend has assembled a range of modern, state of the art, diving equipment rarely found in Australia and rivaling most ocean based on-shore contractors.

The equipment includes:

• A portable twin lock recompression chamber.
• A wide range of hydraulic and pneumatic tooling including chainsaws, drills, grinders, jacks, hull scrubber etc.
• Floating plant including a fully surveyed workboat with lifting winch and derrick.
• A wet bell.
• A hot water generator, and diving system.
• High resolution, image enhanced, surface monitored video system, both VHS and digital, with a range of underwater lighting.
• A range of still photography equipment including; macro, close up, 35mm and wide angle lenses and strobe lighting.
• Digital photography equipment to 5 million pixels resolution complete with image manipulation software.
• Contaminated environment diving systems.
• Specially designed potable water reservoir cleaning equipment.
• A 9 tonne Isuzu pan tech truck, specifically designed to carry all the diving equipment and including a toilet and a shower for de-contamination.

The specialised equipment and knowledge and experience gained from over 35 years in the diving industry has allowed Descend to actively compete for commercial diving contracts. Descend has specifically targeted work which the ocean based contractors often find distasteful.

That is the low to nil visibility, deep, cold or contaminated water reservoirs of inland Australia and we now hold contracts for over 30 of the Goulburn Murray Water Reservoirs that make up their Headwork's catchments. In addition we have contracted as far away as Chitchester Dam near Newcastle for the Hunter Water Corporation and have completed several contracts for the Australian Capital Territory Electricity and Water (ACTEW) at the Bendora and Corrin Dam storages.

Our biggest contract to date will be the massive task of cleaning and inspecting all of the bridges over the Murray River starting at Indi and finishing at Wentworth, a distance over 1000kl. This project for the Road and Traffic Authority (RTA) is expected to be completed by June 2003.
Tasks are as diverse as lock re-instatement, sealing turbine tunnels, video and still photography, surveys, stop log placement, underwater concreting and grouting, pipeline construction, pylon cutting, demolition using underwater cutting and explosive techniques, dredging, salvage, underwater welding, the cleaning of potable water reservoirs and tasks completed in contaminated environments.