Infrastructure for a Better Future

Earlier this year Andy Jinks, Regional Director - Midlands at National Highways UK, spoke at our infrastructure symposium. While Andy was here, Jessie Lea, Special Advisor - Asset Management at Te Waihanga, sat down with him to talk through his experience in improving asset management capability at National Highways and London Underground.

In this episode of Infrastructure for a better future, Jessie Lea, Special Advisor - Asset Management at Te Waihanga, speaks to Jan Stoker, Senior Strategic Advisor Asset & Maintenance Management at the Ministry of Infrastructure & Water Management, Netherlands, and Murray Pugh, Chief Executive, at Āpōpō, Infrastructure Asset Management Professionals Inc. Jan and Murray speak to the challe...

In this episode of Infrastructure for a better future, Graham Campbell, Director - Economics & Research at Te Waihanga, speaks to Charles Marohn, Founder and President of Strong Towns, after his recent visit to New Zealand from the United States. Graham spoke to Charles about his view of the National Infrastructure Plan and how his experiences in the United States align with the key issues in...

Alain Bertaud is one of the world's most influential urbanists and a leading thinker on how cities actually work. He recently visited our offices and sat down with Te Waihanga Chief Executive, Geoff Cooper to talk about urban planning, zoning, congestion charging and the heart of the city.

The estate managed by the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) spans the length of New Zealand. It covers 80,000 hectares of land, has over 7,000 buildings and includes every type of infrastructure across its camps and bases except for railway lines - and it used to have those. With responsibility of such a range of infrastructure it’s no surprise that NZDF made multiple submissions for the first roun...

It seems obvious when you think about it, but somehow, it's easy to forget – infrastructure is all about people. It's not about concrete and construction. These are just means to an end. When the people and communities who collectively use and pay for infrastructure are missing from being a meaningful part of the conversation, it can be hard to tell if infrastructure investment and services are me...

Te Waihanga Director of Economics & Research, Graham Campbell, speaks with Chuck Marohn, Founder and President of U.S. non-profit Strong Towns. They talk about infrastructure in the U.S. and New Zealand, and what can make infrastructure more sustainable.

In this episode of our ongoing podcast series, Infrastructure for a Better Future, Te Waihanga Chief Executive Geoff Cooper speaks with Dr. Kerry Bobbins, Head of the Enabling Better Infrastructure Programme, convened by the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK). Kerry speaks about the challenges and best practice approaches to infrastructure planning as shown by different governments around the wor...

In this episode of Infrastructure for a better future, Peter Nunns, Acting General Manager – Strategy at Te Waihanga, speaks to Professor Jim Hall, who is the incoming President of the Institute of Civil Engineers in the United Kingdom. They discuss the Commission’s work on a National Infrastructure Plan for New Zealand. Hall emphasises the importance of strategic infrastructure planning, sharing...

We use a number of funding mechanisms to raise most of the money we need to pay for our network infrastructure services. Good infrastructure pricing is needed for efficient and sustainable infrastructure investment. Sometimes funding approaches are obvious and connected to how much we use, like monthly electricity bills and mobile phone bills. Other times they are far less visible, like fuel excis...

How does local government debt finance infrastructure? What are the options and what situations should they be used? In this podcast episode, Te Waihanga Senior Communications Advisor Shelly Biswell speaks to Principal Economist Graham Campbell about our recent research that looks into if local government is debt constrained. We unpack this research and look at how local government debt options ha...

In this episode of Infrastructure for a better future, we look at the Carbon Neutral Government Programme, which aims to accelerate emissions reduction in the public sector. In particularly, we look at the work being undertaken by the Ministry of Education. As part of this programme, the Ministry has baselined its emissions across two and a half thousand schools and kura - no easy task. The work i...

Population growth is one of the biggest drivers of infrastructure services. More people, means more transport connections, more housing and more jobs. Last year, Infrastructure Victoria published research titled Choosing Victoria’s future that sketches out five urban form scenarios and makes the case that when it comes to an urban footprint, we have a certain set of choices that we can make. These...

We know that teams that reflect our communities can listen better, understand better and better engage with our communities, and together can build better more resilient infrastructure. So why is it that only 11% of infrastructure workers identify as women? In this episode, Te Waihanga Director - Leadership Nicola Richardson speaks to Stacey Mendonça, MNZM, Senior Quantity Surveyor and Estimator a...

How are researchers currently seeking to understand the role that indigenous communities play in infrastructure development including post-disaster recovery? How has engineering teaching changed to consider these issues? As part of our research into Māori engagement in infrastructure, Clare Sinnott, Writer and Researcher at Te Waihanga spoke to Dr Matthew Hughes, Senior Lecturer - Department of Ci...

Is our critical infrastructure vulnerable? What does New Zealand need to do to ensure that it has the planning capabilities to effectively deal with natural disasters and other events when they occur? In this episode, Te Waihanga Senior Communications Advisor Simon Thomas speaks to Chair of the New Zealand Lifelines Council Roger Fairclough about the Council's recent Critical Infrastructure Nation...

Much of the infrastructure we build today will still be in use a century from now. Would we make better infrastructure decisions if we thought more about the long term?

The future is uncertain. While we can do our best to predict what will happen next month, next year, or fifty years from now, we can’t be sure what will actually happen.   In this episode, Te Waihanga Senior Economist Nadine Dodge catch up with Brad Singh, to learn about how the transport team at Wellington City Council is dealing with uncertainty in their business. Brad talked about many sources...

While the future is uncertain, when done well, corridor protection – designating or acquiring land for infrastructure in advance of when it’s needed – can have benefits for day and tomorrow. In this episode of ‘Infrastructure for a better future’, Nadine Dodge, Senior Economist – Strategy at Te Waihanga talks with KiwiRail representatives David Gordon, Capital Planning and Asset Development Office...

Large-scale and complex infrastructure projects, often take longer and cost more than expected, but some places seem to get better results than others. In our latest podcast, we take a global view of infrastructure project costs and why certain places are better at delivering infrastructure on time and in budget. Peter Nunns Director - Economics at Te Waihanga speaks to Dr. Eric Goldwyn from New Y...

Te Waihanga Principal Advisor - Strategy, Nik Green recently spoke to Senior Advisor - Delivery Christian Gamst about stormwater and resilience. This is part of our work to understand the severity of the January 2023 Auckland Anniversary weekend storm resulting in stormwater flooding in Auckland, the impact of the storm on Auckland’s infrastructure and the issues or weaknesses this event has raise...

We need our cities to be attractive and inclusive places to live. An important aspect of achieving this is by ensuring our infrastructure services are accessible to everyone. Two Auckland Transport advisory groups – the Public Transport Advisory Group (PTAG) and the Capital Project Advisory Group (CTAG) have been true catalysts for change and have been at the forefront of making Auckland's transpo...

A recent report commissioned by Te Waihanga looks at how and why the consenting system needs to change for Aotearoa to deliver on it's net-zero targets. Sapere Research Group completed the research. Ross Copland, Chief Executive at Te Waihanga spoke to Corina Comendant, Senior Managing Economist at Sapere about the findings of the report.

A changing macro-economic and geopolitical environment can act as either a headwind or tailwind to better infrastructure. In this complex world how does Aotearoa New Zealand make sure it can deliver successful infrastructure projects? How, and to what, do we shift our priorities as a small country at the bottom of the pacific? How do we compete for the talent we need to produce world-class infrast...

To solve New Zealand's infrastructure challenges we need to deliver quality infrastructure at an affordable price. So, how much does it cost to build infrastructure in New Zealand? And how do we compare with other high-income countries? That's the subject of a report that we published last month, entitled ‘The lay of the land: Benchmarking New Zealand's infrastructure delivery costs’. In our repor...