Growing pains for TREC alliance

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The Transport Rebuild East Coast (TREC) alliance is coming to Gisborne in a big way, taking over the three-storey heritage building on Gladstone Road that formerly housed Eastland Group, recruiting locals — some likely to come from businesses which had been led to expect only benefits from TREC’s work — and also planning an accommodation village for about 150 road and construction workers recruited from out of town.

About 80 people were working for TREC in Gisborne two weeks ago, with plans to double that number by the end of this month as it ramps up for the construction phase.

This collaboration between Waka Kotahi, KiwiRail, Fulton Hogan, Downer and Higgins is responsible for the design and delivery of state highway and bridge rebuilding in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay over the coming years, after Cyclone Gabrielle and other severe weather events. It is modelled on rebuild efforts after the 2010-11 Christchurch earthquakes and the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake.

For something pitched as an unalloyed good for the region, there is now considerable disquiet in the local contractor space.

Asked at an encouraging series of meetings to build up for a pipeline of work for which they would be prioritised, contractors were blindsided when roles were advertised  locally that would obviously appeal to some of their key employees.

As well as workforce concerns, some point to the big beneficiaries of previous alliances being the main partners — and that management and consultancy costs ate up a considerable amount of the $2.2 billion provided to the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team for its part of rebuilding the city.

The question they ask is whether more might be achieved for the region if the funding for the rebuild work was made available and projects contested via normal processes.

The pitch from Cyclone Recovery Minister Grant Robertson when he was here in July announcing the alliance was that companies bidding against each other openly would push prices up, stretch capacity and ultimately not serve the public’s needs. An “East Coast first” philosophy would also underpin the alliance, with local contractors getting “a first and fair go” for delivery of physical works wherever there was the opportunity.

Some local contractors might not be in a position to do that if they are struggling to replace key workers, let alone consider growing capacity.

These are thorny issues in a constrained construction market where there is a massive amount of work to be done. It is not a good start, though, when communications raise expectations only for them to be replaced with concerns.