Leisure planner

By MARK STORY

Name: Anita Coy

Job title: Team leader, leisure planner

Working hours: 8.30am to 5pm Monday-Friday

Employer: Auckland City Council; local authorities

Age: 30

Pay: $35,000-$60,000


Qualifications needed: A tertiary qualification is now a minimum requirement. Many entry-level graduates have business or social science degrees.

Career prospects: There's no clearly defined career path but graduates usually start in local bodies or central government organisations (like Sport and Recreation New Zealand) and work their way to senior positions. However, growth within the recreational industry is opening up more consulting opportunities. I moved from leisure planner to team leader six months ago.

Q. What do you do?

A. I lead the team responsible for the city's 18 leisure facilities, including golf courses, Western Springs, recreation centres and swimming pools. Auckland was the first city to contract the management of these facilities to private providers. Part of our job is to supervise the relationship with these contractors.

Our main goal is ensuring the city's recreation facilities best meet the community's needs, so we're always researching and talking with community groups and industry experts, including architects and town planners. Big-scale projects we're working on include a soon-to-be started Otahuhu development. We're planning to build a community centre, pool, library and recreational facility all within one central hub. Smaller-scale projects may include overseeing facility overhauls.

Lots of our time is spent writing reports, in meetings, working through operational issues or responding to public complaints.

Q. Why did you choose this line of work?

A. I've always had a passion for sport and recreation and once represented New Zealand at swimming. I saw leisure planning as an opportunity to combine this passion with the skills I'd acquired as a town planner. I graduated from Massey University with a bachelor's degree in resource and environmental planning.

Q. What skills do you need to become a leisure planner?

A. You need strong analytical, research and communications skills. As you'll be working with annual budgets, it's also important to have some financial ability.

Much of our work revolves around understanding what the community wants, so an active interest or involvement in different leisure and recreational activities is useful.

Q. Best part of the job?

A. It's heaps of fun watching really big projects get finished. Knowing you've contributed to the fun people have while using our leisure facilities is always neat. I also enjoy the political process where we're presenting reports to certain committees. I love the people contact and had lots of fun working with Otahuhu community groups.

Q. Any interesting one-off projects?

A. I really enjoyed working on the $4 million redevelopment of the Parnell Baths on Tamaki Drive. The political nature of this project, plus the technical difficulty of working on such a historical site, made redesigning the pool a really meaty job.

Auckland's new regional sport and recreational strategy, which brings together seven councils and four different sporting trusts, should be equally interesting.

Q. Most challenging/difficult part of the job?

A. Balancing the community's diverse needs and wants with the scientific data we gather is a constant art. That means assessing the pros and cons to find the best cost/benefit outcome.

Q. What sort of training do you get?

A. Most of the on-the-job training we do is designed to close individual skill gaps, and a lot of this is done through mentoring.

There are always technical or skills-based courses to go on, like water treatment, report writing, and project management training.