NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / New Zealand

Cyclone Gabrielle: Engineering our escape from harm’s way - Helen Davidson

By Helen Davidson
NZ Herald·
7 Mar, 2023 04:00 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Cyclone Gabrielle made it clear that we need to build better and smarter to endure the impacts of climate change. Photo / Warren Buckland

Cyclone Gabrielle made it clear that we need to build better and smarter to endure the impacts of climate change. Photo / Warren Buckland

Opinion by Helen Davidson

OPINION

Events such as Cyclone Gabrielle bring managed retreat to the forefront of the conversation.

We’ll need to start having some very uncomfortable conversations about what communities look like in the future in Aotearoa New Zealand.

While the immediate focus will be on the communities affected by the cyclone, this is a conversation we need to have on a much larger and more proactive scale.

To get the rebuild right, we need to enable bold and innovative decision-making about where and how we invest.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

To get there, we need radical collaboration; bringing diverse groups of people together to create a shared understanding of a problem, and to enable diversity of thought to pull together solutions in a new, innovative way.

At its core, it’s about effective communication for smart decision-making.

In the case of the cyclone response, it’ll need to be central and local government, iwi Māori, the affected communities, and the private sector including consultants such as engineers and surveyors, planners and environmental scientists, and contractors, and the wider business community including banks and insurers.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Ex-cyclone Gabrielle gives a wake-up call on infrastructure required to meet the demands of climate change. Rod Emmerson 16/02/23
Ex-cyclone Gabrielle gives a wake-up call on infrastructure required to meet the demands of climate change. Rod Emmerson 16/02/23

We need to collaborate for a sustainable, resilient future for the good of communities, rather than focusing on competitive advantage and commercial interests.

Community involvement is key. The importance of enabling local communities to be part of their own destiny was a key lesson emerging from the Queensland flooding events. The engineering and consulting sector in Aotearoa is an expert at facilitating community involvement alongside delivery partners.

Discover more

Opinion

Simon Wilson: Why they sacked Rob Campbell and why that has to stop

06 Mar 04:00 PM
Opinion

Peter Davis: Our long-term problems keep catching up on us

06 Mar 04:00 PM
Opinion

Kushlan Sugathapala: We deserve better custodians of the family silverware

05 Mar 04:00 PM
Opinion

Steve Braunias: The Secret Diary of Big Bad Rob Campbell

03 Mar 04:00 PM

We need planned, co-ordinated delivery models. There are several pieces to this puzzle. The recovery and rebuild following the Canterbury earthquake sequence was in part facilitated through the use of collaborative contracting models like SCIRT - the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team. Their mandate was to provide a cost-effective, efficient way to quickly get the city’s civil infrastructure back on its feet. It was a $2.2 billion, five-and-a-half-year programme, funded by central and local government, involving more than 700 individual projects across the city repairing and rebuilding water infrastructure, roads, bridges, and retaining walls.

This approach provided certainty around the pipeline and programme of work, so businesses could scale up for the hard mahi ahead and invest in the people and equipment needed to deliver.

We need a similar framework here; one that continues to elevate the local community in decision-making and delivery.

These planned, co-ordinated approaches will also need to consider where we can create efficiencies.

One key area where efficiency can be gained is in the procurement and contracting of service providers. Procurement can be a lengthy process. Firms put a lot of time and resources into responding to bids and negotiating contracts – time that could be better spent getting on with the work. In this case, there is plenty of work to go around.

While allowing for a level of healthy market competition, we need to look at how we can bring more efficiencies through these procurement processes so time and money aren’t needlessly wasted.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

We can also learn from the experience of residential insurance claims after the Christchurch earthquakes. Nobody wants a repeat of unresolved insurance claims 10 years after the event.

Helen Davidson. Photo / Thomas Brydon
Helen Davidson. Photo / Thomas Brydon

Immigration settings are critical for the success of the rebuild programme.

Our sector reported more than 3000 shortages in 2021; that figure hasn’t changed.

Our borders only really opened in the latter half of last year, and we’ve seen attrition through delayed OEs and families relocating overseas.

Though our borders are open and there are immigration pathways, we need to change the perception that New Zealand is closed.

We need to provide out-of-the-box, collaborative solutions like the nextstopnz.com collaboration we led with our engineering and consulting sector and recruitment specialists, HainesAttract. The initiative pulls resources for an international requirement campaign to benefit the whole sector.

We also need to have smooth immigration processes. The new six-month visa is only good for emergency responder professionals who want to come in for a short period of immediate recovery support. Imagine you are an engineer on the other side of the world wanting to support New Zealand through the longer-term rebuild – you’ll only relocate yourself and your family if you have certainty of the pipeline of work and certainty that you can stay. The six-month visa does not give that.

We are asking for processes that enable us to be competitive in a global war for talent.

Most importantly, we need to create an environment that will work into the future as we tackle not only the recovery and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle, but also the considerable job of responding to our massive infrastructure deficit which has been severely tested by this event.

- Helen Davidson is chief executive of ACE New Zealand, an organisation representing more than 250 firms employing around 14,000 engineers, project managers, planners, scientists, architects, surveyors and other technical disciplines.

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from New Zealand

Politics

Christopher Luxon raises Cook Islands impasse with Chinese Premier

20 Jun 10:02 PM
Premium
New Zealand

'It was my calling': Inside the Taupō farm taming wild horses

20 Jun 10:00 PM
Premium
Opinion

David Seymour: I was invited to Oxford but learned a sad thing about NZ

20 Jun 09:00 PM

Jono and Ben brew up a tea-fuelled adventure in Sri Lanka

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from New Zealand

Christopher Luxon raises Cook Islands impasse with Chinese Premier

Christopher Luxon raises Cook Islands impasse with Chinese Premier

20 Jun 10:02 PM

Luxon has now headed onward to Europe.

Premium
'It was my calling': Inside the Taupō farm taming wild horses

'It was my calling': Inside the Taupō farm taming wild horses

20 Jun 10:00 PM
Premium
David Seymour: I was invited to Oxford but learned a sad thing about NZ

David Seymour: I was invited to Oxford but learned a sad thing about NZ

20 Jun 09:00 PM
Three hospitalised after major house fire in Dunedin

Three hospitalised after major house fire in Dunedin

20 Jun 06:39 PM
Help for those helping hardest-hit
sponsored

Help for those helping hardest-hit

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP