He says the assumption that there were technical problems was a misdiagnosis. "I think the Government got it right, they knew what the root cause was and what needed to be done to address it."
Martin has since recruited a new management team - "probably the most talented in New Zealand". Peter Sparrow has been appointed as the council's director of building control and city rebuild. There are two teams, one specialising in residential and the other in commercial.
"One of the first things I noticed when I came down here was that nobody had a clue what lay ahead of us in terms of demand and volumes," adds Martin. To rectify this, a forecasting model was developed using data from Cera, MBIE, insurers and project management offices.
Says Martin: It showed a "tsunami of work coming towards us, which was quite unusual for the construction sector."
The projections showed demand for consents would rise fast before plateauing. There would then be a steep drop as the rebuild began to draw to a close. The unprecedented demand, combined with the sheer volume and complexity, posed difficulties.
"We decided to increase our head count by about half of what was required and we went out to the international market and brought on board a lot of experienced building officials from Canada and the United Kingdom," says Martin.
They were recruited on 12-18 month contracts and enabled the council to draw in the requisite assets for short-term use in the peak of the rebuild without poaching staff from other NZ regulatory bodies.
Martin has also aggressively outsourced some consenting work to other building consent authorities that have put their hands up to help. But inspections are unable to be out-sourced as they required people to be able to carry them out in person.
There has been a significant change in the turnaround as new efficiencies are introduced. The team has worked with residential developers who are building big clusters of housing with standardisation of design and product lines and effectively consented them in advance to speed things up.
"We think there are quite significant gains which can be made in this area, but they're gains that are realised over time as they're more discrete," says Martin. "But you knock an hour off issuing a building consent and those gains will certainly accumulate.
Increasing the use of technology has also been a major factor, with an overhaul of the internal IT system set to take place at the end of March.
"All of our inspectors carry what's called a GoGet, which is a tablet that is linked into the system here," Martin says. "They can go to the sites and download all the plans and documentation when they're out. They've all been trained to use them and we've had hugely good feedback."
The council will look to apply for accreditation at the end of April. Ten assessors are scheduled to visit in July to review the council's progress and identify any corrective actions that may be needed.
The goal is to restore IANZ accreditation by September (if not earlier) says Martin.
"It's a great new team here, before we were in here running the show and now they're almost pushing me away which I think is great. It's a real measure of success."
Building confidence
Doug Martin is one of New Zealand's most experienced advisers on improving the performance of public sector agencies. Previous roles include working on the implementation of NCEA for secondary schools and performance issues with Environment Canterbury.
Building Consent Action Plan
Appointed Peter Sparrow as Director of Building Control and City Rebuild.
23 hires for building inspector and building consent officer positions.
15 contracted organisations processing consents; average 660 building consents issued monthly; improved forecasting systems and resources.
Christchurch City Council will reapply for accreditation next month.
