Infrastructure report: Planning processes under the spotlight

An artist's impression of the Avon river precinct.

The rebuild of Christchurch has put public planning and procurement processes under the spotlight. With creative methods of delivery and new approaches to financing becoming more common, marrying infrastructure development with long term urban planning becomes increasingly important says Garry Bowditch, Chief Executive at the Smart Infrastructure Facility.

"There is a pattern around the world where Governments fail to think about the people and the institutions infrastructure developments will serve," says Bowditch.

"Infrastructure is so much more than just a project - it's about the way the project connects to the infrastructure around it and how the development can best extract the synergies of the precinct and existing infrastructure.

"Good infrastructure comes from good planning. It's just not possible to deliver good infrastructure in any jurisdiction without good planning. But when you're developing a master plan, at all times it is essential to be conscious of what the actual problem being solved is.

"The master plan needs to relate back to expressing at project inception, exactly what the customer service outcomes are desired from the investment. It's really off the back of those outcomes that the design and project specifications should flow."

Outcome-based procurement and evidence based design are becoming more prevalent worldwide, as Government agencies work under increased pressure to deliver valuable infrastructure on a constrained budget. There's still significant room for improvement though and both need to be more commonly used tools in the public sector arsenal, Bowditch says.

"What we've seen around the world with Governments is that they will often be very headstrong about completing a project. The real issue though is that they will have rushed the initial project inception element and devised a solution that may not be the best option and could well have been achieved in a more cost-effective manner."

A more open public consultation process and better signalling from Government around their intentions and the desired outcomes from assets, are the first steps in working to address widespread issues with infrastructure development.

"In the early stages of project development, transparency around defining the problem at hand and the analytical tools available can be used together to better inform the public why Government's have chosen the particular intervention they have.

"These are fundamental basic issues that seem to be systematically overlooked by many Governments around the world. There is a significant lack of transparency particularly around project selection choice, and that can be very distortionary to getting good decision-making.

"Too often these choices become subject to political pork-barrelling instead of a proper assessment of what is good for the nation. "