Jeremy Sole: More bang for ratepayers' buck

Opinion

Success of the Auckland Super City will depend to a huge extent on effective and efficient infrastructure in and around the new city. Healthy infrastructure - that provides what society wants and needs - provides an economic injection to cities and the country as a whole. It also increases efficiency by moving goods faster and more effectively.

To develop healthy infrastructure, certain elements are required: collaboration between the main parties; decades-long forward planning; marketplace competition for tenders; no artificial constraints to development; and timely access to funding. Local and national progress in each of the elements is being made but the pace needs to be stepped up to ensure systems are in place for the burgeoning needs of the super city. Upgraded and/or new sewerage, water and roading systems will all be required. Meaningful collaboration between the main parties is starting to occur; which is heartening for the New Zealand Contractors' Federation

The Auckland Regional Contracts Group is a case in point. The ARCG is an informal body of engineering and contracting companies and local government works staff involved together in future works planning. Group forward planning will ensure ratepayers get the best bang for their buck when it comes to major infrastructure spending.

Also welcome is the Government's expected 20-year infrastructure plan, which will present a high-level view of the state of New Zealand's infrastructure and include a stock-take of existing infrastructure and anticipated future requirements. The plan will help ministers, agencies, local government and the private sector identify needs and prioritise investments to lift growth and will contribute to a degree of certainty that will avoid boom-bust cycles.

Areas that require strong focus now are the other elements crucial to healthy infrastructure; effective systems around procurement issues, reducing the artificial constraints that waste time and money, and ensuring access to funding when required.

In Auckland, one of the problems has been different district plans, agendas and resource consent criteria. For instance, contractors laying pipes from Auckland City through to Waitakere have had to change pipe sizes at the boundaries due to different regulations.

It is hoped that this kind of inefficient discrepancy is addressed through the new Infrastructure Bill, which aims to improve the consistency of regulatory arrangements.

My last point is around timely access to funding. We support recent Department of Building and Housing calls for the Government to provide a rolling 10-year forward capital investment plan. This will in turn allow the sector to plan ahead effectively.

We also support Government investigations into the viability of a "bond bank" to help councils finance up to $30 billion of planned infrastructure over the next decade.

* Jeremy Sole is the chief executive of the New Zealand Contractors' Federation.