NZ Local Government August 1608 by Contrafed Publishing

SKATING ON THIN ICE? Social media meets the Public Records Act p32

IMPROVE YOUR INTRANET NZ LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE VOL 53 • AUGUST 2016 • $8.95

Three councils share their stories p36

RAIN RADAR Estimating the size of flood events p42

MAGIC OR MADNESS? Christchurch City’s mega model p43

S implythe 2016 LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS p18

Kerry Prendergast: Outstanding Contribution to Local Government

2016 SOLGM Annual Summit 21 – 23 September 2016

Inspiring Leadership Insightful Leaders, Impressive Communities

The SOLGM Annual Summit is the annual ‘must attend’ event for local government professionals and provides delegates with the opportunity to explore emerging trends and discuss with their peers issues of significance to the sector. Speakers will explore the theme of “Inspiring Leadership” and, following on from the success of the interactive workshops in the 2015 Summit programme, this year’s programme includes facilitated discussions allowing delegates to actively participate in workshop topics. More information on the programme and presenters can be found in the Summit website SOLGM2016.co.nz. Early bird registration discounts are available till 19 August.

Kim Hill, Broadcaster and Summit MC

Rabia Siddique, Humanitarian, Author and Summit Keynote Speaker

Mark Rogers, Chief Executive from the City of Birmingham and International Panellist

IN THIS ISSUE NZ LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

CONTENTS P17 IN THIS ISSUE

P36

P32

P18

REGULARS

REPORTS

4 Editor’s Letter 6 In Brief 16 Products & Services 17 Events 51 LGNZ

18 S IMPLY THE BEST 2016 LGNZ EXCELLENCE Awards 32 S KATING ON THIN ICE? Social media meets the Public Records Act 36 IMPROVE YOUR INTRANET Three councils share their stories 38 E CAN CAN A collaborative water management project puts locals in the driver’s seat 40 E MISSIONS IN REMISSION Three responses to the carbon challenge 42 TECHNICAL BRIEFINGS Using rain radar to estimate the size of flood events & Christchurch City’s mega model – magic or madness?

COLUMNISTS 44 Lyn Provost: From the Office of the Auditor-General 45 E lizabeth Hughes: Local Government 101 46 Linda O’Reilly: On Legal Issues 47 J eremy Elwood: On the Funny Stuff 48 Helmut Modlik: On Training 49 P eter Silcock: From Civil Contractors New Zealand 50 Lawrence Yule: From LGNZ

PROMOTED CONTENT 30 C ENTRAL HUTT RIVER REGENERATION PROJECT 35 P ROCUREMENT FITNESS TEST FOR COUNCILS

ON THE COVER Simply the best:

2016 LGNZ EXCELLENCE Awards. See page 18.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

EDITOR’S LETTER NZ LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

Time to celebrate If ever there’s a good time of year to take stock and celebrate all the good things going on in local government, it’s got to be now. This issue is being brought out especially early at the LGNZ annual conference in Dunedin so we can help acknowledge the achievements of this year’s batch of EXCELLENCE Awards winners. They’re a pretty diverse bunch. They’ve been helping make cities safer, bolstering employment, making big decisions on which roads to prioritise for maintenance, reducing pest numbers, creating art centres, forming significant partnerships with iwi and protecting homes from flooding. And that’s just a handful of this year’s award-winning projects. Full coverage of all this year’s winning and highly commended entries starts on page 18. There were so many strong entries this time that we’ve had to hold off coverage of a further 11 finalists’ entries for subsequent issues of this magazine. Plus we’re adding our own shout out to Kerry Prendergast whose 24 year career in local government sees her being acknowledged with an EXCELLENCE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Local Government. Like so many people in the sector she talks about being motivated to “give back” something to her community. Such celebrations take part against the backdrop of nominations for the local body elections which lurk just round the corner on October 8. The elections signal a time of huge potential change in the governing bodies of our councils. Typically, there’s a turnover of between 33 to 40 percent of elected members at each election. Well handled, this creates a wave of opportunities for renewed impetus and energy in the sector. For our own part, here at Contrafed we’re celebrating two years of publishing Local Government Magazine. Thank you to all those people who have so generously shared your challenges, insights and solutions via the pages of this magazine during that time. Here’s looking forward to another year of great stories to come.

Ruth Le Pla, editor, ruth@localgovernmentmag.co.nz

PUBLISHER Contrafed Publishing Co. Ltd, Suite 2.1, 93 Dominion Rd, Mount Eden, Auckland 1024 PO Box 112 357, Penrose, Auckland 1642 Phone: 09 636 5715, Fax: 09 636 5716 www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz GENERAL MANAGER Kevin Lawrence DDI: 09 636 5710 Mobile: 021 512 800 kevin@contrafed.co.nz EDITOR Ruth Le Pla Mobile: 021 266 3978 ruth@localgovernmentmag.co.nz SALES CONSULTANT Charles Fairbairn DDI: 09 636 5724 Mobile: 021 411 890 charles@contrafed.co.nz CONTRIBUTORS Ann Smith, Jeremy Elwood, Sarah Heal, Elizabeth Hughes, Helmut Modlik, Linda O’Reilly, Lyn Provost, Peter Silcock, Lawrence Yule ADMINISTRATION/SUBSCRIPTIONS admin@contrafed.co.nz DDI: 09 636 5715 PRODUCTION Design: Jonathan Whittaker studio@contrafed.co.nz Printing: PMP MAXUM CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOME Please contact the editor before sending them in. Articles in Local Government Magazine are copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the publisher. DISCLAIMER Local Government Magazine is an independent publication owned and produced by Contrafed Publishing. The views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of any of its shareholding organisations.

www.linkedin.com/nzlocalgovernmentmag @nzlgmagazine

ISSN 0028-8403

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MAKING CONNECTIONS

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IN BRIEF

IPWEA NZ ANNUAL EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2016 Congratulations to the following clients, consultants and project operators whose work was celebrated at the recent IPWEA NZ Annual Excellence Awards 2016 in Auckland. EXCELLENCE IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

EXCELLENCE IN MAXIMISING ASSET PERFORMANCE

Winner

Timaru District-Wide Wastewater Strategy

Badhams Bridge Widening

BEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT, UNDER $5 MILLION

BEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT, OVER $5 MILLION

Winner

Sumner Road Retaining Wall, Stage 4

Te Ara I Whiti – The Lightpath

EXCELLENCE IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

EXCELLENCE IN MAXIMISING ASSET PERFORMANCE

Winner

Timaru District-Wide Wastewater Strategy CLIENT: Timaru District Council CONSULTANT: CH2M Beca In 1997 the Timaru District Council embarked on a strategy to upgrade wastewater services in the district and connect the towns of Geraldine, Temuka and Pleasant Point to the Timaru system. In Timaru the industrial component of the wastewater is high and so separate trunk sewers and treatment processes have been provided for industrial and domestic wastewater. Investigations, consultation and consenting took place over four years. Construction of the $60 million project took place over the next 15 years, with the project completed in January 2015. The project has delivered an excellent, energy efficient, affordable district-wide solution for wastewater treatment and a discharge consistent with community expectations and consenting requirements.

Badhams Bridge Widening CLIENT: Timaru District Council CONSULTANT: Opus International Consultants CONTRACTOR: Whitestone Contracting The 173 metre long Badhams Bridge is located on a local road in the Timaru district about eight kilometres from Temuka. The bridge was a 1960s' single-lane structure requiring upgrading to two lanes due to increased traffic volumes. The cost of providing a new two-lane bridge was estimated to be $6 million, whereas the cost of widening the existing bridge (and taking advantage of its estimated 50 year remaining life) was $3.5 million. The widening option was selected, saving $2.5 million. However, this involved strengthening and improving the seismic capacity of the existing structure, as well as dealing with the differing stiffness of the superstructure where the old and the new join.

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Here, a solution was designed to allow the new hollow core units to articulate transversely, ensuring that they did not shed too much load to the stiffer original beams. This is an excellent example of a project that maximises asset performance while providing much improved service, at reasonable cost. Highly Commended Oamaru Water Treatment Plant Membrane Replacement Project CLIENT: Waitaki District Council CONTRACTOR: GE Water and Process Technologies By 2015, the water treatment membranes at the Oamaru Water Treatment Plant had come to the end of their life. As well as replacing these membranes, the Waitaki District Council needed to futureproof the plant for additional growth. In 2015, council decided to install an innovative new membrane product from a new supplier to the New Zealand market. This new product increased the plant capacity with a capital cost saving of $400,000, under a contract where risk was transferred to the supplier. With the new installation the plant consumes less energy and has the capacity to produce 25 percent more high-quality drinking water. By being open to the use of a new product (after careful consideration of the only other installation of this product in the world) the Waitaki District Council has increased the capacity of its water treatment plant while at the same time benefitting from savings in both capital and operating costs.

metres of a redundant motorway off-ramp, plus installation of feature lights, face recognition CCTV cameras, and magenta surfacing. The bridge is a triangular, orthotropic, steel box girder. The shape comes from the geometric requirements for the cycleway and clearances to the highway. It falls within the narrow, irregular shaped corridor available for the bridge. The section of the cycleway on the redundant motorway off-ramp is fitted with three-metre high clear screens so that users can enjoy the harbour and city views. The three-metre high interactive LED lighting columns allow the users to interact with the lighting. Maori artwork in the form of 15 etched steel carvings of humanistic figures was installed along the cycleway. A six-metre high carved steel post (pou) marks the entrance to the cycleway. The Minister of Transport has said that this project is a “jewel in the Auckland crown”. Highly Commended Queenstown Airport Runway Widening and Overlay CLIENT: Queenstown Airport Corporation CONTRACTOR: Downer CONSULTANT: Beca Downer was awarded a six month, $15 million contract to upgrade the Queenstown Airport and provide for evening flights, starting late May 2016. The construction work mainly happened at night, and at the end of each shift the runway had to be ready to land aircraft, including re-marking the asphalt works completed during the shift.

BEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT, UNDER $5 MILLION Winner Sumner Road Retaining Wall, Stage 4 CLIENTS: Christchurch City Council, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority CONTRACTOR: Fulton Hogan CONSULTANT: SCIRT Sumner Road is an arterial road that links Lyttelton to Sumner, and was partially closed due to rock fall risk as a result of the Canterbury earthquakes. For the past three years SCIRT’s Fulton Hogan delivery team has been repairing and strengthening the existing retaining walls along Sumner Road. Sumner Road Stage 4 was the strengthening of existing 100 year old, gravity retaining walls (six metres in height) that support Sumner Road above the Holcim Cement site. For slope stability reasons the wall needed to stay in place, so removal and replacement was not an option. And the work needed to be done in such a way that the road above the wall was not loaded, and the Holcim Cement site below could keep operating. So the wall strengthening was carried out from a large access platform that was held in place by a crane. The strengthening was by installation of soil nails, construction of a concrete footing beam and applying shotcrete facing. The project cost $1.5 million.

BEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT, OVER $5 MILLION Winner Te Ara I Whiti – The Lightpath CLIENT: NZ Transport Agency CONSULTANTS: GHD, Novare Design, Monk Mackenzie CONTRACTOR: Hawkins Infrastructure Te Ara I Whiti (or The Lightpath) is a $12 million walking and cycling path comprising a 160-metre bridge, and re-use and re-purposing of 660 AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

IN BRIEF The asphalt plant was delivered from Germany, and produced 860 tonnes of asphalt per night, which is exceptional. The Paveset Levelling system was used to achieve the +/-5mm finished level tolerance, and smart rollers were used to achieve the specified compaction. Polymer modified asphalt was used in the turning areas to deal with the aircraft turning stresses in the extreme Queenstown climate. This project met the challenges of safety and quality while working at an operational airport under night work conditions and a tight non-negotiable completion deadline. Highly Commended Kohimarama Storage Tank and Branch Sewer Upgrade CLIENT: Watercare CONTRACTOR: Fulton Hogan CONSULTANTS: MWH, Tonkin & Taylor During significant wet weather events, a Watercare Wastewater Pumping Station located in Kohimarama (Auckland) was overflowing an average of eight times per year directly into the Kohimarama stream and eventually to the Kohimarama beach. This was due to insufficient pumping and storage capacity at the pumping station. To minimise such uncontrolled discharges to the harbour and to improve the overall public amenity of the area, a 20-metre internal diameter, 16-metre deep underground storage tank was constructed at Kohimarama, along with upgrading of the adjacent sewer network. This tank has been installed with a Biogest vacuum flushing system, the first such installation in New Zealand. A key innovation in the project was the use of multiple rows of overlapping deep soil mixed columns around the perimeter of the excavation to support the upper soils and control groundwater flows, rather than the more traditional sheet piling method. This innovation significantly reduced the construction noise and heavy vehicle movements impacting on the neighbourhood. The $11.5 million project was delivered on time and under budget.

OUT OF THE BOX, NOT OFF THE SHELF.

FIND OUT MORE AT martinjenkins.co.nz MartinJenkins

8 l www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz

Facility management guide The New Zealand Recreation Association (NZRA) has alerted us to a newly-released Sport New Zealand Community Sport and Recreation Facility Development Guide. It’s written to help people looking to build or develop a community aquatic and / or indoor sports facility. It builds on the National Sporting Facilities Framework. And it has a special focus on the affordability and whole-of-life financial sustainability of multi-sports centres. Download a summary, or the whole kit and caboodle, from the Sport New Zealand website. bit.ly/SportNZ_FacilitiesGuide

Gender still a factor Elected officials may be the biggest obstacles to hiring female local body chief administration officers (CAOs) in the US. That’s according to Pat Martel, president of the Washington, DC, based International City/County Management Association (ICMA). Pat says the ICMA hopes to work with other organisations – including the National League of Cities and the US Conference of Mayors – to educate elected officials and engage them in actively recruiting and hiring women CAOs. She summarised the ICMA’s work to encourage diversity and inclusion within the local government management profession at a recent meeting with several cohorts of the Governing Institute’s Women in Government Fellowship Program. • Between 1981 and 2011, roughly 13 percent of ICMA women members in service to local government were at the CAO level. Over the years, the number has increased only slightly. • As of April 2016, among the 6617 ICMA members working for US local government full time, 28.5 percent (1886) are women. • Roughly 3400 of the 6617 are CAOs, of which 15 percent are women. • Among the 1100 ICMA members who serve at the assistant or deputy CAO level, 37.2 percent (409) are women. Pat, who is also city manager for Daly City, California, has made it her mission as ICMA president to address the issue of gender imbalance in local government.

Solutions to local challenges don’t roll off a conveyor belt. They take insight, knowledge, experience, and above all, creativity. Our hats off to all finalists in the 2016 LGNZ EXCELLENCE Awards. Celebrating outstanding service delivery

IN BRIEF DATES FOR YOUR DIARY AUGUST 3–5 International Business Communities Conference. WINTEC Campus, Hamilton www.businesscommunities.co.nz

9 – 14 IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition. Brisbane, Australia bit.ly/IWAWorldWaterCongress

3–6 Civil Contractors New Zealand Conference. SkyCity Convention Centre, Auckland www.ccnzconference.co.nz

10 – 14 23rd World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems. Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne www.itsworldcongress2016.com

9 – 12 PWWA 9th Pacific Water Conference and Expo. Fa’onelua Convention Centre, Kingdom of Tonga bit.ly/PWWA_Conference

11 – 12 Australia-New Zealand Climate Change and Business Conference. Rendezvous Hotel, Auckland www.climateandbusiness.com

10 – 11 Wild Places 2016. Viaduct Events Centre, Auckland www.edsconference.com

19 – 21 Water New Zealand’s 58th Annual Conference & Expo. Rotorua Energy Events Centre www.waternzconference.org.nz

15 – 16 Community Plan Forum. Waipuna Hotel, Auckland bit.ly/SOLGM_CommunityPlan 15 – 17 2016 New Zealand Esri User Conference. SkyCity Convention Centre, Auckland www.eagle.co.nz/nzeuc 24 – 26 Sustainability in Public Works Conference 2016. Jasper Hotel, Melbourne www.eastcoastconferences.com.au/sustain2016

SEPTEMBER 1–2 Procurement for Local Authorities Made Simple. Sudima Hotel, Christchurch bit.ly/SOLGM_Procurement 18 – 20 Customer Service Symposium. James Cook Wellington bit.ly/ALGIM_CustomerService 19 – 20 Auckland Transport Infrastructure Forum. Pullman Hotel, Auckland bit.ly/CONFERENZ_AklTransport 21 – 23 2016 SOLGM Annual Summit: Inspiring Leadership. The Langham, Auckland www.cmnzl.co.nz/solgm-2016 22 – 24 RMLA’s OUTstanding Annual Conference 2016. The Rutherford Hotel, Nelson www.rmla.org.nz/annual-conference

OCTOBER 3–4 Funding and Rating Forum. Amora Hotel, Wellington bit.ly/SOLGM_FundingRating 5 Introduction to Asset Management. Commodore Airport Hotel, Christchurch bit.ly/IPWEA_IntroAssetMgmt

NOVEMBER 1 Asset Management for Parks and Community Facilities. Commodore Airport Hotel, Christchurch bit.ly/IPWEA_AssetMgmtParks 1 Road to 2018 LTP Seminar. Millennium Hotel, Queenstown bit.ly/SOLGM_RoadTo2018 [See website for other dates / venues] 2–3 Public Lighting 2016 Conference. Sydney bit.ly/IPWEA_PublicLightingConf 7–8 NAMS Advanced Asset Management Forum 2016. InterContinental Hotel Wellington www.nams.org.nz 21 – 23 2016 Annual ALGIM Conference. SKYCITY Convention Centre, Auckland bit.ly/ALGIM_Conference 28 – 2 Dec Water Infrastructure & The Environment. Millennium Hotel, Queenstown www.nzhs2016.co.nz

DECEMBER 6 Introduction to Financial Governance. LGNZ LGNZ, Lambton Quay, Wellington www.lgnz.co.nz 15 Introduction to Financial Governance. LGNZ Selwyn District Council, Rolleston www.lgnz.co.nz

2017 FEBRUARY 22 –23 Freshwater Management & Infrastructure. Wellington bit.ly/CONFERENZ_FreshwaterMgmt

Would you like us to include your event in this calendar? Please email details to ruth@localgovernmentmag.co.nz

10 l www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz

Help me, help you!

A message to NZ’s Rural & Provincial Mayors

e had a bit of fun with the

And unless urgent action is taken,

Specifically, I’m seeking your support

‘help me, help you’ theme at

the situation is going to get worse.

for Local Government New Zealand to

your most recent LGNZ Rural

That’s why I’m seeking your support in

work with us in seeking an amendment

& Provincial Mayors’ sector meeting in

promoting a three-point plan to ensure

to the Freedom Camping Act 2011

Wellington.

this issue is stopped in its tracks.

which would promote a consistent

But I trust the serious intent of the

1. A simple, consistent, nationwide

approach from every Council in the

message wasn’t lost. Because at a time when NZ’s tourism industry is thriving like never before – and should be returning massive economic benefits throughout the country – abuse of freedom camping is threatening to undermine the economic benefits of Motorhome Tourism nationwide. What’s really frustrating for us in the Motorhome Tourism industry is that the problems are not being caused by responsible freedom campers in Certified Self-Contained vehicles – the

approach, welcoming responsible Motorhome Tourism – with the default position that freedom

camping on Council-controlled

land is permitted in a CSC vehicle

country. Please ‘help me, help you’ by working with us to head off this serious threat to Motorhome Tourism in New Zealand.

only, unless a bylaw or decision

made by a Council under another

enactment restricts or prohibits the activity.

2. The NZMCA working with the Standards Authority to ‘raise the bar’ on the existing CSC Standard; and 3. Motorhome rental companies

issue is with low-budget travellers in

supporting Councils in collecting

poorly equipped sleeper vans and cars.

unpaid infringement fines.

New Zealand Motor Caravan Association | P 09 298 5466 www.mhftowns.com | www.nzmca.org.nz

Bruce Lochore NZMCA CEO

IN BRIEF Outdoor Awards You have until 4pm Monday August 15 to send in nominations for this year’s Outdoor Awards. The awards are run by the New Zealand Recreation Association (NZRA) and recognise excellence in the outdoor recreation community. Winners will be announced at the Outdoor Forum Dinner in Wellington on Thursday September 1. For more information email deb@nzrecreation.org.nz

Devolution The UK’s Local Government Association has put out a green paper calling for comment on four key questions around devolution in the local government sector. The paper What next for devolution? says the result of the EU Brexit referendum vote will put local government at the heart of bringing communities together. “As work starts on arrangements for the future, there cannot be an assumption that power over these services will transfer back to Whitehall. If it is better for local people, then powers should rest with local areas.” Thirty four local devolution deals were submitted to the UK’s central government in 2015. There are now devolution deals in place in nearly a dozen areas in England covering

a population of around 25 million people. While early deals homed in on growth and economic policy, this latest green paper says it’s now time to look at a wider agenda. “There is agreement in local government that the dividing lines between social and economic policy need to be redrawn.” The paper asks four questions: • Do we have the right principles underpinning devolution? • How can we use devolution to deliver effective public service reform? • How can we move from functional devolution to fiscal devolution? • How can we make sure our residents are engaged?

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12 l www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz

ON THE MOVE Kaipara District Council’s new CEO is GRAHAM SIBERY. He has extensive experience in the public and private sectors in service delivery, investment infrastructure projects and major contracts. Kaipara continues to be governed by a panel of three commissioners first appointed by the Minister of Local Government in 2012. The organisation will transition to elected governance in October this year after the local body elections.

EROAD names JARRED CLAYTON as its chief operating officer (COO) – a new role created to oversee global operational functions. Jarred will be based Jarred Clayton in New Zealand, working out of the company’s Albany headquarters. He is responsible for corporate, manufacturing, and research and development operations. Jarred has been with EROAD since 2008.

MARK AVERILL will take over from Bruce Hassall as PwC New Zealand’s senior partner and CEO at the start of October. Mark has been a partner for 14 years, a member of Mark Averill the executive team for three years and has spent a total of almost 26 years at the firm.

KEITH BEAL is the new general manager, strategy and property opportunities at Otakaro Limited. Keith led the restoration of earthquake-damaged buildings in the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch. He has also worked extensively abroad, delivering projects for the BBC and Disney. ROBERT FISKE was recently appointed general manager, development. Robert has been employed by BHP Billiton in Perth for the past five years.

Hynds appoints DAVID WHEELEY as CEO of the Hynds Group of Companies, manufacturers and David Wheeley suppliers of infrastructure products in the civil construction and rural sectors. David has been with Hynds for four years – initially leading the company’s business investment in Australia, and most recently as executive manager of distribution running Hynds’ Australian and New Zealand distribution network. Before joining the company, David led several large Australian manufacturing businesses in a similar pipelines sector. Current managing director ADRIAN HYNDS is moving within the broader family enterprise to take up a new role as managing director of parent shareholding company Hynds Holdings.

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AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

IN BRIEF Game coding Public libraries get a tick of approval in a recent report evaluating a learning-to-code-a-game workshop pilot project. The report Game coding workshops in New Zealand public libraries says both adults and young people surveyed tended to agree that public libraries are a good place to run workshops about coding and game design, and that libraries are a good place to find out about careers involving STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Authored by Rachel Bolstad – a senior researcher at independent, statutory education research and development organisation NZCER – the report assesses a workshop pilot project offered in seven public libraries around the country between September 2015 and February 2016. Participants were taken through the process of creating their own simple 2D video game, learning the basics of coding, computational thinking, and digital game design. The workshops were free and drew 426

people across the seven locations. One of the goals was to increase access and opportunity for young people who might not otherwise have the chance to engage with coding, computer science and game design. The workshop was created and developed through a partnership between Public Libraries of New Zealand, Gamelab, Hutt City Council and public libraries in Dunedin, Timaru, Nelson, Hutt City, Gisborne, Porirua and Wellington. The project aimed to reach young people from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as those typically underrepresented in computer science and STEM (including girls, Maori and Pasifika). The workshops introduced participants to Gamefroot, a free gamebuilding platform developed in Wellington by Gamelab. Funding came through the Unlocking Curious Minds fund administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Brexit report A new Grant Thornton report says the UK public sector is unlikely to feel the impact of the recent Brexit “leave” vote immediately. That’s due to the timescale of any negotiations and uncertainty over how any outcome may impact on the economy, trade deals and freedom of movement. However, Brexit – A public sector perspective says a number of medium and longer term impacts will need to be considered. If the chancellor’s proposed Brexit austerity budget were implemented, for example, that includes five percent further

reductions for local government and two percent for health and education. “There may be some very specific challenges linked to business rates which, as the new model of funding for local government, will be very sensitive to economic downturn if it were to be still a consequence of Brexit in 2020.” The report also notes that many of the more deprived communities throughout the UK are heavily reliant on EU-funded regeneration and infrastructure schemes.

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14 l www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz

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Air quality

EU referendum Local government should be redoubling its devolution pressure following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU). So says Solace president and Birmingham City Council CE Mark Rogers, who argues local bodies should take the opportunity to make cities and regions the catalysts of change in the country. He warns there is a “clear risk” that renegotiations with the EU replace the current devolution focus. Local communities, he says, should be at the centre of decision making. “We need to ensure the money sent to Brussels is now better spent in our local communities. This means ensuring EU-funded projects both continue and flourish by making decisions at a local level more closely with the people it impacts.” Mark describes the economic picture as “unclear and potentially damaging to public sector funding”. “Future income for councils, including the devolution of business rates, needs to be reconsidered in a more volatile economic climate. The fiscal squeeze has already fallen too tightly on councils and services are unable to shoulder further cuts.” He says councils and their partners will need to consider the potential implications on the future pipeline of staff, particularly in shortage areas like social care, nursing and transport. They also need to reassure current non-EU employees of their role in delivering safe and secure public services. “There is a big job for civil servants and local government staff to do to understand the implications of Brexit. We need to work together to ensure power moves to the right place and positive change is accelerated, not destabilised, by the public’s decision. “If the lesson of the campaign is that large swathes of the population are detached from the political process, the answer is not to further concentrate power in Whitehall.” Mark Rogers will be speaking at the 2016 SOLGM Summit being held in Auckland from September 21 to 23. www.cmnzl.co.nz/solgm-2016

Northland air quality data is now on the environmental monitoring website Land, Air, Water Aotearoa (LAWA). Real-time data for monitored towns includes Whangarei and Ruakaka in Northland. LAWA now has data available from about 150 air monitoring sites nationally.

CCNZ conference If you get your skates on you could just make it to this year’s Civil Contractors New Zealand (CCNZ) annual conference. It’s at Auckland’s SkyCity Convention Centre from August 3 to 6. Visit the conference website for more information. www.ccnzconference.co.nz

The ABC of standards Twenty one councils from across New Zealand – 27 percent of the sector – have signed up to be involved in the first year of LGNZ’s new standards programme, which will see councils assessed by independent experts, given an A, B or C rating and the results shared with the public. Assessments began for an initial group of councils at the start of July this year and will continue into 2017. Results will be shared from around the middle of next year.

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AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

PRODUCTS & SERVICES Digital analytics service Cucumber has just launched a digital analytics service specifically aimed at local government organisations. The move has been driven by strong demand following Cucumber’s Google Analytics Workshop at the recent ALGIM Web & Digital Symposium in Wellington. Cucumber is a digital consultancy with offices in Tauranga and Auckland. It says it uses digital analytics tools to provide insights based on real user interactions, “not hunches or guesswork”. It also makes recommendations to councils on

how to incrementally improve their websites to better engage with ratepayers and other key stakeholders. It can help define which recommendations are quick wins and where clients may need to invest for the long term. The service includes: helping clients define and set up measurable digital goals that support their organisational strategic goals; Google Tag Manager audits, recommendations and implementation; and custom reports.

EROAD Share EROAD has enhanced its Share offering, which helps companies minimise risk by sharing live and historical vehicle information. As well as vehicle location, EROAD Share now lets companies share information on how those vehicles are being driven, providing parent companies with the same level of visibility into owner driver fleets as their own. An integrated technology, tolling and services provider, EROAD says the change simplifies compliance with the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. Brought into force in April this year, the Act puts on to transport operators added responsibilities for the health and safety of subcontractors and employees at companies with which they work. With contractors and subcontractors classified as workers in many situations,

Pizazz presentation products

operators now need the same visibility into their subcontractor fleets as they have of their own in order to meet chain of responsibility requirements. EROAD’s enhanced Share offering means driving behaviour can be monitored through shared vehicle data being included in Over Speed Dashboard, Leaderboard and Driver Insight reports. Subcontractor and contractor vehicles can be ranked against each other.

Aqualiner Aquatech Solutions is now offering Aqualiner expandable sleeves for trenchless fully structural and infiltration repair of all material types of live stormwater and sanitary sewers and pressure pipelines. The sleeves are available in stainless steel for smaller (micro) 100mm – 900mm diameters and PVC for manentry (mega) 600mm – 4000mm diameters. According to Aquatech Solutions, Aqualiner provides cost-effective fully-structural repair of cracks, joints and damaged pipelines. The sleeves are non-hazardous with no VOCs, CFCs or HFCs, and are pH neutral. Aqualiner has a 100-year design life and a 10-year manufacturer’s warranty. The sealing membranes (silicate resin fibreglass or polyurethane) are non-toxic and cure in fullysubmerged conditions. Both the Aqualiner micro and mega sleeves have already been used on Watercare main trunk PE and plastic-lined concrete sewer

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Cucumber says this service provides greater transparency on where investment in digital is having a positive impact and highlights areas to be addressed. The company is already working with Tauranga City Council.

repairs. Wellington Water, Auckland Council and Porirua City Council are also using them on their drainage networks. Aquatech Solutions is a specialist engineering company offering pipe network rehabilitation systems.

Pizazz is a New Zealand company that supplies a range of innovative inter-changeable visual / graphic presentation products and has local authorities and councils libraries among its customers. The company has now been taken over by Danny Trainor who was previously the managing director at large printing company PMP (NZ). Danny says Pizazz is about to start marketing to the local government sector a new range of display product. A popular new display product among councils and libraries, he says, is Posterfix. Ideal for fixing to windows to give a double-sided display, these eye-catching poster displays take less than a minute to set up, he says, and keep documents tidy and protected. They are available in standard poster sizes from A5 to A0. Pictured is one in use at Auckland’s Albany Library. The librarians say they love its ease of use.

Tell us about your products & services If you have recently launched a new product or service please email editor Ruth Le Pla for next steps on sharing your story with the people who make the buying decisions in local government. All articles published at the discretion of the editor. ruth@localgovernmentmag.co.nz

EVENTS AT THE IPWEA NZ ANNUAL CONFERENCE

5 1. Caroline Boot (Clever Buying) & Stephen Griffin (Buller District Council). 2. James Logan, Americo dos Santos, Shane Knyvett, Tim Macintosh (all from Hynds Pipe Systems) & Leigh John (Aquatech Solutions). 3. Peter Higgs (IPWEA NZ) & Ross Goyne (IPWEA Australasia). 4. Cameron Pascoe (SuperSealing) & Angela Fry (Toowoomba Regional Council). 5. Adam Humphries (Fulton Hogan) & Brent Manning (Water New Zealand). 6. Lee Gregory & Dylan Revell (both from 12d NZ).

7. Craig van Asch (Exeloo), Jeff Devine (Whangarei District Council), Steve Coatham (Exeloo) & John Sargeant (South Taranaki District Council).

8. Steve McDonald (Australasia Moulding). 9. Duncan Smith (AVK Valves). 10. Bruce Kaplan (American Public Works Association 2016 Jennings Randolph International Fellow) & Malcolm Abernethy (CCNZ).

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS

S implythe BEST 2016 LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS

It’s time to celebrate. Here is some of local government’s best work in recent times, and the scope and scale are impressive. These local authorities have been working in deep partnerships with communities, making sound investment decisions, and balancing the need for short-term tactical moves with huge long-term strides forward. Their projects cover everything from infrastructure management, environmental impact and community engagement, to local economic development and creative places. Read on to find out who’s the best.

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO LOCAL GOVERNMENT KERRY PRENDERGAST When Kerry Prendergast entered politics with the Tawa Borough Council she saw it as a stepping stone to parliament. But the immediacy of local representation and the chance to give back to the community in tangible ways sparked a 24 year career in local government. For her commitment to local government she has been awarded the EXCELLENCE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Local Government. Ms Prendergast joined the Borough Council in 1986 before being elected to Wellington City Council in 1989 where she remained for nearly 20 years (including three terms as mayor), and gave her time to the wider sector as vice president of Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ). Ms Prendergast says it was almost inevitable she would go into local government – her father was on the Tawa Borough Council long before she was – and once she made the step she was totally absorbed. “You get to meet so many people and you get to give back,” she says. “Giving back was one of the values instilled in me as a child, particularly from my father. I was always raised to believe you should give back to your community.

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“In local government it is very immediate. You can make policy that can be implemented straight away and you get to work with the community on a daily basis.” Among council achievements under her leadership was establishing the city’s identity as “Creative Wellington – Innovation Capital”, the effects of which can be seen today as the capital continues to attract creative and technology companies and workers. “It was not only to market the city to Wellingtonians but also to visitors,” she says. “It was about understanding what you could do as a city, and promoting economic entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in small and medium enterprises – growing the economy. Basically I was an ambassador and advocate for the city.” The Creative Wellington brand helped identify Wellington as an events and cultural capital. Among other achievements from her time as a councillor and mayor Ms Prendergast cites securing $220 million from the Helen Clark government for social housing in Wellington, creating the waterfront boulevard of trees from the stadium to the Michael Fowler Centre, adding 20 sculptures to the city, and working to have the ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie built, as particularly proud achievements. Ms Prendergast says everyone who enters local politics does so with a passion, which was certainly true of her. LGNZ president Lawrence Yule says Ms Prendergast’s contribution has been significant, and she is still giving back in her capacity as board member or trustee for a range of organisations including New Zealand Community Trust and Motu, the SPCA, as chair of Tourism New Zealand and the Environmental Protection Authority and – keeping it local – Wellington Free Ambulance. “Kerry has been a stalwart of Wellington and through her hard work over a long period helped define how the city would be seen by locals and visitors alike,” Mr Yule says. Ms Prendergast was vice president of LGNZ and a trustee of the Joe Aspell Trust during her time as mayor. She was a director of Wellington International Airport and the Wellington Region Association of Midwives until 2010. She is an honorary life member of the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society and of Plunket. In the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours, she was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to local body affairs.

CHORUS EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST PRACTICE IN INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

WINNER

Southland District Council – Changing Direction, The Way Forward for Southland’s Roads Southland District Council has the second largest roading network in the country and needed an innovative solution to address the pressures being put upon it and target maintenance which is most needed. This was the driving need behind the programme, Changing Direction, The Way Forward for Southland’s Roads. Southland has the largest rural network in New Zealand, consisting of about 5000 kilometres of roads and 1000 bridges. About 3000 kilometres of the network are gravel while the rest are sealed. This network is facing pressure from increased economic activity, particularly from the dairy industry, with increasing volumes of heavy vehicle movements. In the face of a rapidly-changing financial environment, the council has had to look for innovative ways, including partnerships, to balance making the most effective investment decisions with meeting the expectations of its communities. The council worked with one of

New Zealand’s largest businesses, Fonterra, to find out where maintenance of the region’s road network was needed and introduced the multi-component project to gain deeper insights into the pressures placed on its roads. This has enabled it to develop new ways of ensuring resources are targeted to the areas of greatest need and economic benefit so it can develop a fit-forpurpose network. The project uses new technology, resource allocation tools and procurement methods to make smart decisions on managing the district’s roads. It focuses on attaining better economic outcomes for ratepayers through smarter spending decisions, as well as better environmental outcomes by optimising levels of service to ensure safer journeys for Southland’s road users. Judges described it as an “innovative approach to improving the management of roading infrastructure – showing positive results”.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS AIR NEW ZEALAND EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT WINNER

Auckland Council – Hunua Ranges Pest Management Programme Auckland Council’s 1080 programme to reduce possum and rat numbers in the Hunua Ranges has been hailed as “courageous” by judges. The Hunua Ranges Pest Management Programme, carried out in August and September 2015, achieved its targets of reducing pest numbers to allow for ecosystem recovery and the reintroduction of rare and threatened species. In recent years, possum and rat numbers had increased significantly in the area, having a severe effect on the health of the forest and treasured native species that live within it. The range has the only naturally occurring

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population of kokako in mainland Auckland. It is also the habitat of a number of rare and endangered flora and fauna including the longtailed bat, Hochstetter’s frog, and kaka. Other indigenous species, including kereru, bellbird, tomtit, tui and piwakawaka (fantail) also live in the ranges. The council voted to change the way it managed pests to include the use of 1080 bait with the aim of reducing pest numbers to less than five percent and increase flora and fauna in the parklands. This included private land and land managed by other agencies and was successful in reducing the pest numbers to

target levels, and increasing biodiversity. The approach has significantly reduced predator numbers and led to a marked improvement in native species. This was achieved by using technology and science to distribute much lower doses of 1080 than in the past. Judges praised the project as “a wellplanned and courageous initiative which achieved its objective to protect native wildlife in the Hunua Ranges, while at the same time safeguarding the water supply to New Zealand’s largest city, which is important to New Zealand”.

FULTON HOGAN EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT WINNER

Hamilton City Council – Hamilton Central City Safety Plan Hamilton City Council led a highly successful, innovative and collaborative approach to address problems of people engaging in antisocial behaviour in public places. Mayor Julie Hardaker led the Hamilton Central City Safety Plan, described by judges as “a well-planned and executed initiative which has addressed a complex issue, affecting all large urban centres, with positive results”. Like many cities, Hamilton had a problem with people engaging in antisocial behaviour in public places. The project was launched in September 2014, in response to significant public and business concerns about this and to restore public confidence in the safety of the central city as the council works towards achieving the outcomes of the Hamilton Central City Transformation Plan. The council set a three-year timeframe based on a holistic approach to improve perceptions of public safety, with mayor Hardaker leading a collaborative approach by multiple agencies to tackle the issue. The project has taken a two-pronged approach of setting boundaries as to what is acceptable public behaviour and providing help to the homeless through the People’s Project – which has resulted in 125 people being housed and provided with ongoing support.

Outcomes have included a 30 percent reduction in reported crime in the central city and a significant rise in the number of individuals and businesses that feel safety has improved in the central city. As well as providing direct support to the homeless, measures included implementing a bylaw that defined acceptable public

behaviour, and working with police to see patrols stepped up. The council also revamped its City Safe team and highly-visible safety officers now patrol the central city at key times. CCTV camera operators also work to spot issues and ensure City Safe Patrols, police or ambulance staff are notified immediately where needed.

Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth

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AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS CREATIVE NEW ZEALAND EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST CREATIVE PLACE WINNER

New Plymouth District Council – Len Lye Centre An “inspired decision” by New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) to create the city’s Len Lye Centre has given Taranaki a stunning facility housing a world-renowned art collection, archive, education facility and cinema. The council has won this award for the centre at the council-owned Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth. Judges praised the centre – which houses some of the collection and archive of the internationally renowned artist – “as an internationally significant place which recognises one of New Zealand’s preeminent sons”. They also noted that it is a wonderful partner

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for the Puke Ariki Museum, and acknowledged the commitment from the community in raising funds for it. Len Lye, one of the most important artists to emerge from New Zealand, pioneered the idea that art could not only represent movement but could actually be in motion. He became a US citizen in 1950 and, while internationally-recognised, was virtually unknown in the country of his birth. The opening of the centre in 2015 has raised his profile in New Zealand, with the centre attracting national and international visitors. The first New Zealand exhibition of Lye’s work was held at the Govett-Brewster in 1977.

When he died in 1980, he gifted the works in his possession to the Len Lye Foundation for the public benefit of New Zealanders – stipulating his original works could only be permanently displayed in New Plymouth. Before the construction of the Len Lye Centre, only two exhibitions of Lye’s work could be mounted each year – but this still drew more than 500,000 visitors between 1980 and 2010. From the outset NPDC recognised the potential for the project and wrote a strategic plan in 2003 to realise it. The centre has become a national symbol of local government collaborating with its community in pursuing a bold vision.

MARTINJENKINS EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST PRACTICE CONTRIBUTION TO LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WINNER

Kawerau District Council and Matamata-Piako District Council – Seamless Boundaries A conversation between the mayors of Kawerau and Matamata-Piako district councils led to an innovative collaborative programme that has helped unemployed people into jobs and supported a key local business. The Seamless Boundaries job creation programme, run between the two councils, has seen jobless Kawerau people relocating to Te Aroha to work for Silver Fern Farms. Judges praised the scheme as “a practical response which brings together people wanting to work, with an employer looking for a stable workforce”. Kawerau mayor Malcolm Campbell and Matamata-Piako District Council mayor Jan Barnes are both strong advocates of the Mayors’ Taskforce for Jobs and support exploring innovative solutions to longstanding problems. In April 2015 they discussed how a number of people in Kawerau were struggling to find jobs while Silver Fern Farms, one of Matamata-Piako’s largest employers, was having difficulty fulfilling recruitment needs. They recognised that the councils could partner in addressing both these issues through finding opportunities with Silver Fern Farms for those in Kawerau who might

otherwise struggle to find sustainable employment. Stakeholders were consulted and terms of reference developed and 40 Kawerau workers, of mixed ages, have since relocated for employment with the company. The driving objective of the project has been to create an environment where both employer and employee felt supported and motivated to maintain the relationship.

The councils and Silver Fern Farms have taken a holistic approach, with appropriate support put in place for family members remaining in Kawerau. Accommodation and high-quality wrap-around pastoral support was also provided to help those moving to Te Aroha. And monitoring programmes around timekeeping, being drug and alcohol free, and training and production values were provided to help keep people on track.

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AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS CHORUS EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST PRACTICE IN INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT HIGHLY COMMENDED

Hamilton City Council – Low River Contingency Project Hamilton City Council took an innovative, and economic, approach to its interim solution to ensure a continued water supply for the city. The Low River Contingency Project resulted in the development of a new floating pumping platform on the Waikato River. Judges praised it as “a smart project, led by council staff, that has provided long-term drinking water security for the city”. In 2015/16 falling river levels and climate effects were threatening to compromise the city’s ability to take water from the river, the city’s sole access to water. Hamilton’s treatment plant receives water

through a fixed intake structure which is compromised if river levels drop below it. In three of the last four summers the city has been very close to an emergency contingency plan to pump water using hired equipment. Amending the intake structures was estimated at $26 million and would expose the city to further risk because water supplies would be compromised, if not halted, during construction. The decision was taken to construct the pumping platform capable of maintaining water supply to the city during periods of low river levels. Hamilton has one of the fastest-

growing populations in New Zealand and this solution had to be scalable to allow for increased water demand over the next 15 years and to be ready, if needed, in 12 months. Design and construction hurdles needed to be overcome and the platform needed to integrate with existing infrastructure. The alternative floating pumping platform option was completed for $2.5 million, well under its $3.5 million budget, and lifted into place in March 2016. As well as avoiding the need for expensive capital works for another 15 years, it met the Ministry for the Environment’s key principles in addressing climate change.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Napier City Council – Marine Parade Outfall and Viewing Platform This project fused functionality and aesthetic beauty in the design of a new stormwater outfall. The Marine Parade Outfall and Viewing Platform is a key part of the overall upgrade of the Napier inner city stormwater network. Following a number of flooding events over the years, Napier City Council recognised it needed to review and upgrade its city centre stormwater network and find a way to push water away from the city. From 1995 the council began setting aside a portion of rates to upgrade the capacity of the stormwater network to address these issues. Council staff led a team, involving external contractors, to tackle a project which carried inherent environmental complexities, resulting in an outcome which is a blend of many years of hard work, careful preparation and thoughtful design. Work began in 2012, with much of the project centred beneath one of the CBD’s main streets. With much forethought, part of the pipeline was laid three years ago so it would not disrupt the development of the MTG Hawke’s Bay museum. With all other work being completed underground, the outfall pipe represents the final journey for flood water to safely run from the inner city to the sea – delivering at

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the same time a masterful blend of functional engineering and 21st century design. Delivered for just over $1.5 million and in time for the 2015/16 tourist season, the viewing platform, topped by its “cloud” cover has become the most photographed structure

on Marine Parade and a destination experience for locals and visitors alike. Judges praised the council for delivering an essential infrastructure project to such high quality, within budget and with a high level of community support.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Westland District Council – “Water water everywhere. Nor any drop to drink.” (Blue Spur Water Treatment Plant Expansion Project) Westland District Council partnered with longtime local business Westland Milk Products to upgrade the council’s water treatment plant, with major benefits for the company and community. The innovative Blue Spur Water Treatment Plant Expansion Project was also achieved at no extra cost to ratepayers. Westland Milk Products has been processing milk in Hokitika since 1937 and is the district’s largest employer. It needed to upgrade its production plant to introduce infant formula production but this would mean an increase in water consumption. The company uses about two-thirds of Hokitika’s water supply, with the remaining one-third being used by residents. The council had identified the need to upgrade the Blue Spur plant in its 2012/22 long-term plan. However as the council’s total operating budget is only $20 million per annum, with $14 million coming from rates, the project would have needed to be funded by the district’s water consumers, either through depreciation funding or debt. However, Westland Milk Products and the council agreed it would be mutually beneficial for the company to continue to use water

supplied from the existing plant. They worked collaboratively to develop a partnership agreement and work on the upgrade of the plant – with the costs being entirely met by the company. Westland Milk Products is now one of New Zealand’s leading producers of infant nutrition

ingredients and the increased processing abilities of the Hokitika plant, made possible with more treated water, will contribute significantly to the growth of Westland’s GDP. Judges highlighted the “smart approach by a small council to secure its ongoing water supply at little cost to its community”.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS AIR NEW ZEALAND EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT HIGHLY COMMENDED

Bay of Plenty Regional Council – Ohiwa Harbour Strategy Implementation Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s innovative Ohiwa Harbour Strategy (OHS) implementation project won praise from judges for using a collaborative approach to address deteriorating water quality – one of the big issues facing New Zealand. The project brought together local communities, iwi and agencies to address concerns about the health of the harbour. Community and council concerns were first raised in 2002 and a need identified for a collaborative and united response to sustainably manage the harbour and catchment in a holistic way, including improving water quality and protecting biodiversity. A proactive approach was taken to protect this regionally significant natural resource before the deteriorating water quality became a major problem. The overarching objective was to maintain and enhance the health and natural qualities of the harbour, with an environmental focus on improving water quality and protecting biodiversity. Signed in 2008, the OHS is overseen by a

forum with membership from regional and local councils and tangata whenua. It has resulted in the creation of Onekawa Te Mawhai Regional Park, birdlife has been increased through successful pest control, water quality has improved, and iwi and the wider community are actively engaged in the care of the harbour. The project is an innovative example of government agencies and iwi working

collaboratively to look after a body of water not mandated by a statutory settlement. Judges praised the initiative, which has also been recognised by the Morgan Foundation, as “an excellent project and an example of how joined-up action can turn around a deteriorating water system, and of how local government, working with others, can address one of the big issues facing New Zealand at the moment”.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

West Coast Regional Council – The Lake Brunner Water Quality Enhancement Project West Coast Regional Council acted on early warnings of deteriorating water quality in Lake Brunner, engaging the community to address the issue. Lake Brunner is considered the most vulnerable lake on the West Coast due to development pressure and high recreational use. It is an important attraction for national and international tourists, a popular destination for the local and wider West Coast community and of significant

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importance to iwi. Monitoring by the council detected a decline in water quality and, while it was not poor on a national scale, there was potential for eutrophication, where excess nutrients, usually due to run-off from the land, cause dense plant growth. There are 22 dairy farms located around Lake Brunner and Lake Poera and intensive dairy farming around the lake was identified as a major cause of the decline.

This needed to be addressed for the good of the environment and the community. The council led a successful project to engage landowners to voluntarily change their practices to address the concerns. A mixture of regulatory and non-regulatory approaches proved very successful. In 2012 the council also successfully applied to the Ministry for the Environment’s Fresh Start to Freshwater Fund for funding to assist farmers to deliver projects that would go beyond what was simply required to protect the lake. A $200,000 fund was provided to help with fencing and riparian planting along the numerous waterways transecting farms on their way to the lake. Judges praised the success of the scheme, noting the decline in water quality has been halted and the quality target met five years early. “That’s impressive for a small local authority and a small community.”

FULTON HOGAN EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT HIGHLY COMMENDED

Christchurch City Council – Dudley Creek: Long-term Flood Remediation Project Christchurch City Council has been engaging with the community to develop a preferred approach to addressing flooding in Flockton. The Canterbury earthquakes worsened flooding in many areas of the city and this was particularly evident during extreme rainfall events in 2014. The Mayor’s Flood Taskforce was set up to look for short-term measures to protect areas vulnerable to flooding. However, a longer term solution was needed for the worst affected areas of Flockton / Dudley Creek. Residents trying to recover from the earthquakes were facing flooding and unhealthy homes, and reporting increasing health problems, stress and financial challenges. The council made the decision to address the increased flooding risk in the area as its first priority in its Land Drainage Programme. Fourteen options had been initially identified as possibly offering long-term

flood remediation benefits and these were eventually narrowed down to three. Extensive community engagement – resulting in a high number of submissions – was carried out to work through these to find an outcome that worked best for all the people involved. This included two consultation processes with the council providing wellattended public drop-in sessions. Project team members met regularly with residents and kept them updated through an e-newsletter. Ultimately, a preferred option was

approved by the council with full support from the community. This is currently under construction and due for completion by mid2017. Judges praised the thorough consultation process, with the engagement strategy designed to involve members of a community under considerable stress. They also hailed the high level of engagement and the project’s “capacity to make significant improvement to the quality of life for the residents living in the Flockton area”.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Rotorua Lakes Council – Te Arawa Partnership Project This is a groundbreaking collaboration between Rotorua Lakes Council and Te Arawa to work towards creating an innovative local government and iwi partnership. The council and the iwi governed, managed and undertook the Te Arawa Partnership Project in a genuinely collaborative way, working together to research options to build greater links and involvement of Maori in

local government and then to implement the partnership. The council initiated the project in late 2013 to help deliver on its intent, set out in the Rotorua 2030 vision document, to develop a new partnership model with Te Arawa, support community leadership, work innovatively outside traditional delivery mechanisms, and reshape council to be more effective and responsive. Te Arawa had also called for a new partnership with the council. Aims included ensuring recognition of the significance of Te Arawa as tangata whenua, and identifying and leveraging strategic opportunities to work closely together for the betterment and successful development of the Rotorua district. Following discussions on how the relationship between the council and Te Arawa might be strengthened, both parties worked together to develop an innovative, strategic and

enduring partnership. The project and approach involved broad consultation with iwi and the wider community through a special consultative process. A major innovation includes the development of a charitable trust, Te Tatau o Te Arawa, to provide ongoing engagement between the iwi and the council. Following community consultation it was also agreed Te Arawa representatives would be appointed to council committees and strategic working parties. The partnership was also the winner of the MartinJenkins Judges’ Choice Award for Outstanding Value and Service Delivery, with judges saying it represented “a step change in council / iwi relationships which will influence the manner in which relationships develop in other parts of New Zealand”. Judges said the partnership built trust against obstacles and was delivered through outstanding engagement with the community.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LGNZ EXCELLENCE AWARDS CREATIVE NEW ZEALAND EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST CREATIVE PLACE HIGHLY COMMENDED

Dunedin City Council – Ara Toi Otepoti: Dunedin’s Arts and Culture Strategy Dunedin City Council has worked with its community to develop a bold and successful arts and culture strategy which has already seen the city become a UNESCO City of Literature. The Ara Toi Otepoti – Our Creative Future (Ara Toi) strategy – drew on national and international good practice by working in partnership with communities and key stakeholders, such as Kai Tahu. The result has been broad support for the objective to be one of the world’s great small cities for arts and culture. The strategy sprang from a wide-ranging community engagement process in 2010/11 to help the council identify priorities for the future of Dunedin.

Feedback included a strong feeling that arts and culture are strongly linked to the city’s strategic objectives like economic development and social wellbeing. As a result, the city developed the strategy to make creativity a part of every aspect of city life. It invested $245,000 to kick-start delivery and endorsed establishment of the Creative Dunedin Partnership, a governance group that brings together organisations and community representatives committed to taking an active role. Key achievements to date also include strong community input into the Warehouse Precinct Revitalisation Plan to breathe new life into an

historic area of Dunedin and protect and enhance the city’s significant built heritage. Overall, for an investment of about $1.5 million of public money, the strategy has seen about $50 million of private investment in the area, including businesses supporting a street art programme and many buildings being brought back into use. Judges praised the council’s strong leadership, the collaborative nature of the project, its strong engagement and full mix of art and cultural forms. They also highlighted the “outstanding commitment from the council which is resulting in strong support from the private sector and international recognition”.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Hamilton City Council – Community Transforms a City Dump Hamilton has transformed an old landfill site into the world-renowned Hamilton Gardens. The gardens have been developed over 35 years, with strong leadership from the council, transforming the former city dump into a worldclass garden, winner of the 2014 International Garden of the Year title. The gardens were hailed by judges as “a very exciting project with extensive benefits in relation to city pride and economic development”. Today the gardens attract about a million visitors annually including around 200,000 international visitors. They’re popular with locals too with 85 percent of residents visiting at least

FINALISTS Look out for commentary on the following finalists’ entries in upcoming issues of Local Government Magazine. CREATIVE NEW ZEALAND EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST CREATIVE PLACE • Napier City Council – Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans • Rotorua Lakes Council – Percent-for-Arts

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once a year. The gardens provide a counterpoint to the city’s lack of natural features such as beach, harbour, mountain or hot pools, or historic buildings. The gardens provide a setting for a wide range of creative items and activities, ranging from sculpture and different forms of craftsmanship to the many performances and cultural events that are held there. These include the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival, the region’s biggest artistic event, opera, outdoor cinema, plays, concerts and gourmet markets. It is also a popular venue for weddings. The council has taken creative approaches

FULTON HOGAN EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT • Central Otago District Council – Young Driver Programme: Skills Not Thrills • Environment Southland – Towards a New Plan: Water and Land • Greater Wellington Regional Council – Hutt River City Centre Upgrade Project • Thames-Coromandel District Council – WWI Memorial Forest

to engaging the community and harnessing resources to create the gardens with limited council funding. It has worked with the community to raise funds, establishing a series of independent trusts. Community and volunteer groups have dedicated thousands of hours, and resources and support has been provided through government-subsidised work schemes. Continuous research has gone into creating a range of historic garden types, internationallyrecognised for their authenticity, with plans underway for four new gardens, three courtyards, a destination playground and information centre upgrade.

• Waikato Civil Defence Emergency Management Group (Waikato Regional Council) – Civil Defence Social Media Strategy • Whangarei District Council – Summer Safe Car Parks

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz For related articles go to our website. Search: LGNZ EXCELLENCE Awards

MARTINJENKINS EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR BEST PRACTICE CONTRIBUTION TO LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT • Canterbury Mayoral Forum – Canterbury Regional Economic Development Strategy • Grey District Council – Grey District Community Economic Development Strategy • Whanganui District Council – Digital Leadership: Whanganui’s Commitment to the Benchmarking for Intelligent Community Status

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

CENTRAL HUTT RIVER

REGENERATION PROJECT A three way project between GWRC, HCC and NZTA

he Hutt River (Te Awa Kairangi) is one of the region’s greatest assets and greatest risks. The suburbs that cluster nearby enjoy proximity to its beauty but live under the constant threat of floods that have been a feature of the Hutt Valley’s history. For decades local authorities have invested in flood protection works culminating, in 2001, in the development by Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) and the community of a blueprint and policy guidelines for improving the resilience of the Hutt Valley from flooding, the Hutt River Floodplain Management Plan (HRFMP). Since then the GWRC has progressively followed the strategy, installing flood protection in different reaches of the river, and with it won the confidence of local communities. The final piece of protection works is now taking place to address the narrowest and highest risk section of the river which is a 3km length through the central Lower Hutt section of the river, where some $1 billion of assets are at risk of inundation in a major flood.

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And in a classic case of adding value, the flood protection scheme has been combined into a more compelling proposition designed to drive better flood protection, transport connections and lifestyle. To achieve this GWRC is working with Hutt City Council (HCC) and the NZ Transport Agency to develop an integrated plan. Boffa Miskell is playing a key role in making that happen. Since 2013 it has been at the centre of shaping the opportunities and objectives for the integrated project, using its expertise in urban planning and design to integrate the differing aspirations of each agency into a project where the sum is much greater than its parts. The role of GWRC is primarily flood protection and ensuring there is sufficient capacity within the river corridor. This typically involves managing the river channel, the height of stopbanks, and removing obstructions to flow. It was clear that alongside the flood protection work, the river upgrade provides an opportunity for HCC to initiate the revitalisation of the city centre and adjoining river space by giving effect

to its ‘Making Places’ strategy through linking the city centre to the river to create a ‘riverside city’, providing a promenade on top of the stopbank, and a river park. The Transport Agency has interests in the transport connections between the state highway and the city in terms of the Melling intersection with SH2. In 2014 Boffa Miskell helped the project team through a process to consider multiple options for the river corridor. This included many combinations of elements (new/no new bridges, hard and soft engineering, more/less habitat value, new/same connections from city, more/less private development opportunities etc) in concert with different balances of land use policy and physical works. Within this process providing for climate change influences has been a significant issue. Climate change experts together with economists Infometrics helped the team to consider adaptive pathways and how to evaluate their value relative to event probabilities. The process was managed by a working and leadership group of

CONTENT SUPPLIED BY Boffa Miskell

officers from the three agencies of HCC, GWRC and the Transport Agency. The options were developed under Boffa Miskell’s guidance with inputs from a team of technical experts to cover the combinations of elements that would deliver on the three agencies' objectives. An engagement process was used to get feedback from the community on the options and the levels of protection sought. This was a potentially risky process as the sensitivities of private property impacts, costs and ‘who pays’ for what were constant touch points. However, the feedback was very supportive of the longer range climate change responsive option, despite this being a higher cost option and requiring many private properties to be acquired and removed. The comprehensive layers of benefits was influential in the community’s decision and support to invest not only to get improved flood resilience, but a new ‘gateway’ point to the city, new pedestrian and cycle pathways (including a new bridge), promenade and river park, improved public transport connectivity and park and ride parking.

With a clear mandate from the community to ‘get on with it’, Boffa Miskell has been engaged (along with an expert team) to continue a process of preliminary concept design and planning coordination to provide more definition to the project and its costs and delivery methods. The aim of the process the team is working on is to provide a project design, package of costs and delivery

options for the project so the three agencies can confirm commitments and then expect to proceed with consenting and designation proccesses for the flood protection proposals in 2017. If we continue to build on the success of the team approach, the Hutt Valley will get not only its important flood protection, but also the multiple layers of benefits generated by the three public agencies working together.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

SOCIAL MEDIA

SKATING

ON THIN ICE? When some tweets are more important than others

Social media content is a record and carries obligations for councils under the Public Records Act. Sarah Heal explains the implications of the coupling of two very different worlds.

any councils are embracing social media to engage with their communities and seek feedback on important issues. However, managing social media is about more than having a Twitter account and a Facebook page. It means having a strategy for effective engagement. A council considering building a new skateboard park in an upscale neighbourhood, for example, may be on the receiving end of some heat, both in the press and through social media. So it needs to manage how it will keep

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up with, and make sense of, comments posted on social media. Council may want to tag the social media conversation in a range of ways: skateboard parks, geographic location, by community, by resource consent, by theme such as noise control or more. It needs to have fast ways of reviewing and responding to the conversation. It may need to find the records of previous decisions made about skateparks. When something especially controversial arises council will need to be clear about what escalation is required and how moderation occurs. Finally, for many council staff social media conversations are relatively new

and may not be considered legitimate. Council needs to build an internal culture of engagement. There’s a lot to consider.

LEGAL & RISK ISSUES Unfortunately ‘doing the best you can’ is not sufficient. Social media content is a record. LGOIMA requests can be made through social media. The channel (social media) is immaterial. It’s the content (a LGOIMA request) that counts. This thinking applies equally to councils’ records management obligations. Under the Public Records Act councils must maintain full and accurate records, and must manage the disposal of records. Social media counts as a record and hence councils

must have a considered approach to dealing with social media content as records. Now, of course, this doesn’t mean that every tweet has value. For the skatepark issue council could be considering: • Is a social media conversation a record of decision-making? For example does it commit council to particular actions such as additional planting or green areas to offset the skatepark impact? • Are the public likely to rely on the information posted on social media for advice or for their own decisionmaking? Will the information being shared about the skatepark influence people’s decisions about buying or selling a house? • Will there be times in the future when council will need to be able to show what specific information was shared through social media? Council may need to show all of the information about the opportunities for the public to have its say. • Is council likely to need or want to reuse this information in the future? If council is considering building more

for managing records adequately. But what if a council really wanted to use social media to enhance the quality of conversation and to extend the diversity and breadth of engagement it was receiving? In these cases, new ways of managing social media content are required.

ALGIM Sarah Heal will be talking about social media and records management at the ALGIM 2016 Information Management / Records Symposium in Auckland at the end of July.

skateparks in the future, information gathered about key issues this time may be relevant. There are three dimensions to managing social media content: capturing content, managing data flow and handling analysis. (See box story “Working with social media content”.) Many councils currently manage each of these dimensions in very manual ways, if they are managing them at all. Screenshots and data feeds are stored as ‘clumps’ of content in electronic document and records management systems. Council responses, decisions and reporting are compiled and stored in the same way. This is sometimes linked with the originating comment and sometimes not. That is certainly better than nothing. And it should meet the requirements

THE FUTURE Imagine now that instead of managing social media content after the fact we actually have a social media hub that allows us to make social media content central. Imagine that, in real time, council was able to automatically tag conversations to one or more topics. For example, the skateboard park conversation might be tagged to: the proposed location; skateboarding; resource consents; noise or more. Staff could retrieve conversations alongside relevant council documents or minutes based on theme. So a council could be viewing all of its content (including social media postings) based on a location; or based on skateboarding; or based on a decision.

WHERE THIS IS HEADED

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

SOCIAL MEDIA

Working with social media content There are three dimensions to managing social media content. 1 CAPTURE: How we capture our council’s social media content and the contributions of others. For example: Council could be capturing the conversation simply as a screen dump from Twitter or Facebook accounts or could be importing the data from these feeds. If we’re thinking of building a skateboard park, adding meaningful descriptions such as tags for issues such as noise, rubbish or recreation will help us work with the information later.

From here, appropriate tasks can be assigned which could include further research, preparing responses or forming decisions. This kind of approach now enables council to act with a consistent and coherent voice and to not just keep up with the conversation but actively engage

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2 FLOW OF WORK: How we search for and review relevant, related materials. How do we organise our responses to make sure they are consistent with previous responses and with council policy? And how do we manage decisionmaking and approvals? For example: If noise is a topic of frequent posts in the social media conversation we need to make sure council responses are consistent with other responses and policy about noise, especially as it relates to skateparks. If council needs to be clear about how its noise policy will be applied in this situation then there

may be an internal decision-making process before council can publish its response. 3 ANALYSIS: How do we understand what social media is telling us? How are we reporting on, and making sense of, the conversation? For example: The conversation about the skatepark could well span multiple months and multiple different conversation topics. What is this telling us about public support or otherwise for a skatepark? How are we keeping councillors and community board members informed about the shape of the dialogue?

with it. The tools are here now. To pick them councils need to embrace a strategic approach to social media content and recognise and embrace the culture change that may be required. LG

• Sarah Heal is director of information and knowledge management solution provider Information Leadership. sarah@informationleadership.com

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz For related articles go to our website. Search: Social media

CONTENT SUPPLIED BY Caroline Boot, Clever Buying

PROCUREMENT FITNESS TEST FOR COUNCILS: HOW DO YOU SHAPE UP?

Procurement practice has come a long way in the past five years. As the number and success rates of legal challenges to public organisations on tendering processes have climbed, so have the concerns of CEOs, elected members, and procurement managers. As a Manager or a Councillor for Local Government, you’re most likely to be concerned about three key procurement issues:

1. What are the risks that you’ll be the next organisation to be slammed by the papers and/ or the courts for unfair tendering processes? 2. H ow confident are you that the time and money you invest into procurement is used efficiently? 3. What evidence do you have that your tender processes deliver best overall value for money? Councils that have revised their procurement practices recently have realised significant cost and time savings. In the process, they have

also minimised the chances of legal challenge, improved supplier relationships, and gained confidence that their procurement decisions are delivering best value. There’s a clear win-win, with tangible all-round benefits. “But do we need this?” I hear you say.” Our procurement staff are experienced and have surely been following best practice for years!” Or have they?

The Acid Test: Here is a quick fitness test to help you assess your organisation’s procurement fitness and effectiveness. Always ✓

Usually ✓

Sometimes ✓

Rarely ✓

Never ✓

1. Our procurement staff have been trained in the Government’s Principles of Procurement and Rules of Sourcing. 2. Our procurement planners also develop RFx documents, and evaluate tenders. 3. We don’t recycle generic RFx documents without carefully tailoring them to the project. 4. The questions in our tenders focus only on the project-specific drivers for value for money. 5. Our tenders evaluate the social and environmental impacts of the project. 6. We use preconditions, supplier panels, prequalification or expressions of interest to eliminate unsuitable suppliers early. 7. Our pass/fail attributes include fact-based definitions of non-conformance, clearly stated in the RFx. 8. Our evaluation teams meet to agree a fact-based scoring system before they review the responses. 9. Attribute weightings are always more than 10% We use pass/fail for attributes of minor importance. 10. On Lowest Price Conforming tenders, we open and rank the prices first and only check the attributes of the lowest price bidder. 11. We use NZQA Qualified evaluators for all NZTA projects over $200k. 12. Our Evaluation Reports include detailed commentary on how the scores were allocated in each attribute.

How did your organisation score? If your answers were mostly ‘Always’ or ‘Usually’ – congratulations! Your procurement people are doing a great job of encouraging competition, following fair and legal processes, and securing sound value for the money your Council spends. If you had several responses in the ‘Rarely’ or

‘Never’ columns, then it’s time for a shake-up of your procurement practices across the board. Chances are, you’re spending far more than you need to, compromising value for money, and exposing your organisation to unnecessary risks. Consider running a training course in procurement and getting your key procurement

staff qualified with the NZQA Level Six NZ Certificate in Infrastructure Procurement. It will be an investment that will pay your Council back, many times over. For more information, see www.cleverbuying. com or contact caroline.boot@cleverbuying.com or 021 722 005.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

H OW T O

IMPROVE YOUR INTRANET 3 councils share their stories

Do you need to update your tired old intranet on the smell of an oily rag? Are you suffering from little staff engagement? Do you have clunky old technology? Three councils spelt out exactly how they resolved their issues at the recent ALGIM Web and Digital Symposium in Wellington.

HUTT CITY COUNCIL What problem were you trying to resolve? Our current intranet was launched in 2009 and lacked the required functionality that would make it user-friendly. The software we were using was outdated and difficult to use. We were so tired of it we decided to change the software completely.

Results Though our intranet has not yet launched our aim is to have our staff trust the website which, in turn, will encourage them to use it more and in a way that encourages collaboration and sharing. We want our intranet to reflect both work and play.

How

Learnings

We ran a council-wide survey, visited external organisations and other councils and put the call out for volunteers to be in our focus groups. For the staff survey, we used Survey Monkey. We went face-to-face with our staff for the focus groups.

• Consult, consult, consult, but don’t make promises you can’t keep – be realistic. • It’s difficult to combine a project with business as usual. • There’s no such thing as over-communication – keep everyone up to date with what’s happening. • Concentrate on needs more than wants.

External suppliers

Other

Technology

We work with Guru Digital Media, based in Thames Coromandel.

Our intranet will roll out in August. Even though we haven’t launched we know that the build

Sonja Cabrera

and launch are an ongoing process. We’ve promised to provide a training regime, to keep the intranet up-to-date, and be flexible on content and functionality. For us the intranet will never be finished. It will continue to be tested and improved. Source: Sonja Cabrera, senior web advisor, Hutt City Council.

MARLBOROUGH DISTRICT COUNCIL What problem were you trying to resolve? To improve staff engagement with our intranet by making it a more appealing and fun place to visit as well as making information more accessible.

How After discussion, we decided that a character would provide a symbol to facilitate engagement with our intranet. Design concept: design as visual communication to promote engagement. The brief: “conservatively funky” – appealing, fun, functional, professional but informal. Brief for staff naming competition: short, catchy name suitable to transform

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into character. Result: Sid (Staff information database). • Fun, digital – reflects our transition to a digital culture. • Friendly, approachable – works in multiple contexts. • Visual messaging – showing character in different contexts both differentiates and integrates content. • Relevance – ability to create various iterations for events/holidays. This both promotes engagement and feedback from staff and gives council a vehicle to recognise that holidays are a significant and important time for staff. Design is supported by increased opportunity for staff to add content:

• All staff can add announcements on the home page. • We run informal, topical polls that all staff can respond to. • Staff classifieds also now have a place on the home page.

Technology SharePoint 2013 using shared service templates with the ability to add our own look and feel. This enables collaboration with the vendor and other councils on functionality and best practice, and shared collective knowledge. This cut down significantly on cost and time during the project as usability had already been tested by other councils.

External suppliers Datacom Sphere team.

Before After

WHAKATANE DISTRICT COUNCIL What problem were you trying to resolve? Our intranet, Whoogle, was running on an antiquated and extremely broken CMS, and only one person in the organisation knew how to update content. Information was badly out-ofdate across the whole intranet, the design was subpar, and staff simply weren’t engaged with the intranet at all.

How We completely rebuilt Whoogle on a new, more modern platform. We also decided early on to democratise the intranet in two ways. First, our intranet is no longer simply a top-down comms tool for the chief exec to get information distributed to staff. We still provide that function, but we’ve put an all-access Newsfeed on Whoogle’s homepage which allows staff to communicate with each other in a simple and highly-visible way. It’s essentially Facebook for the council staff, and it’s allowed truly conversational conversations on our intranet for the first time. Second, everyone in the organisation has the ability to update content everywhere on Whoogle. This is less well-known and somewhat underutilised at this stage, but the number of people contributing to our knowledgebase is slowly and organically growing.

Technology We started with a bog-standard SharePoint 2013 installation. Because out-of-the-box SharePoint

doesn’t perform all that well on mobile devices, we installed an open source Bootstrap framework that gave us a good foundation for a responsive design. With some heavy tweaking via custom CSS and jQuery, we were able to hammer Whoogle into the shape we wanted. Authentication and user profiles are all handled via Active Directory syncing, so we have a “single source of truth” for staff information.

Suppliers Our available budget for this project was essentially zero, so all scoping, design, implementation, and content migration work was done in-house. The closest thing to external suppliers we used was the previously-mentioned open source Bootstrap framework (which was free), plus a third-party SharePoint app called BrightBanner (which was also free).

Results Staff response to the new design of Whoogle was overwhelmingly positive. Newsfeed usage has really taken off, and it’s regularly a hive of activity. Most of all, now that staff know the capability exists for regular content updates and continual improvements to Whoogle, requests for features and services have been pouring in – a stark contrast to the old Whoogle, which staff had pretty much given up on.

Learnings We knew very little about SharePoint 2013 before the start of this project. Now that we have a fuller understanding of its capabilities, it’s slowly growing into an essential part of our digital toolset. It’s had knock-on effects throughout our other services, as well; for example, we were essentially forced into an early upgrade of our Active Directory services because our existing version didn’t support SharePoint 2013. On the non-technical side of things, this project has confirmed that intranets don’t have to be a graveyard where content goes to die. Give people access to simple tools, and they’ll use them. Give them the opportunity to make their voice heard, and they’ll sound off.

Other A project like this never really ends. Once your redesign has gone live, that’s really just the beginning. You have to be willing to commit to continually improving your platform – and the platform has to be flexible enough to allow you to do that. If the commitment is lacking or the flexibility isn’t there, you’re inevitably going to end up with what we had in the old version of Whoogle: the digital equivalent of a ghost town. Source: Chris Rawson, web / intranet office, Whakatane District Council. LG

Results • Self-appointed champions – staff who love Sid’s visual appeal transitioned from active users to intranet champions. • Vendor relationship that fostered innovation and creativity. • Decluttered, visually engaging and easily navigable home page. • An aesthetically appealing intranet. • The capacity to use our character to create engagement at team levels of the site. • Opportunities with shared service model to continually evolve and to leverage ideas and functionality from all councils involved.

Learnings • Using shared services templates and an information architecture that we knew had

worked in other councils freed us up to focus on how to make the site visually engaging. • Creating a character has given our intranet a personality. And our people like interacting with that personality. • Creating a different iteration of Sid for different areas of the intranet has helped teams take ownership of those areas.

Other Sid is considering releasing his inner ‘movie star’ by featuring in a series of how-to videos on various topics both related to the intranet and other internal applications. Source: Mandy Evans, online services solutions administrator, Marlborough District Council.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

FRESHWATER MANAGEMENT

ECAN CAN Collaborative water management empowers communities. An innovative community-led approach to environmentallysustainable water management has seen Environment Canterbury (ECan) put locals in the driver’s seat.

llowing the community to drive change has turned the traditional planning-led model on its head. People from 10 zone committees made up of community members and runanga representatives along with local and regional council representatives have been working to identify priorities and actions for their waterways. Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) programme director Christina Robb sees local knowledge as the key to collaborative water management. “We’re tapping into the passion, knowledge and innovation that local communities have. They know their waterways really well. They live by them, connect with them and drive over them on a daily basis. We’re using

that energy to drive the process.” Ten collaboratively developed target areas help the zone committees to focus on achieving specific goals. These targets cover: recreational and amenity opportunities, drinking water, regional and national economies, natural character of braided rivers, irrigated land area, kaitiakitanga, environmental limits, energy security and efficiency, ecosystem health and biodiversity, and water-use efficiency. Christina says that moving forward on all the targets at once is vital and this gives committees clarity about what they’re working towards. “It’s vital to give attention to all 10 target areas to ensure that the solutions are advanced in parallel. The committees work together to make

sure that they focus on both the shortterm and long-term targets.” Each committee meets monthly to progress towards the targets and to come up with local solutions to waterrelated issues. The meetings are open to everyone and members of the wider community and media regularly attend. Committee members come from a wide range of backgrounds and include farmers, environmentalists, scientists and researchers. Ensuring that committee members can work with others who share different viewpoints is crucial to the success of the strategy. “They must cover a range of interests and have to come from all over the zone. The most important aspect, which they are actually tested on during the selection process, is their ability to

Community action transforms Waikakahi Stream Fencing and riparian planting along with over 20 years work by the local community has transformed Waikakahi Stream near Glenavy from a muddy bog into a pristine waterway. In the 1990s local farmer Chris Paul decided to take action to clean up the stream. He organised a joint public meeting with Environment Canterbury which resulted in the formation of working groups. Farmers, community members, Glenavy school pupils, Fish and Game, and Environment Canterbury staff joined forces to take water quality samples and carry out fish and bird counts. Over two decades later the project is still very much alive with Lower Waitaki – South Coastal Canterbury Zone Committee chair Kate White describing it as a perfect example of what can be achieved when a community works collaboratively. Right from the first meeting everyone worked together to decide what needed to be done. At the next meeting held six months later one farmer hadn’t done his fencing so he turned around and did it overnight. Kate says she has noticed a huge change in the stream, which

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reflects years of hard work by the group. She credits the combination of riparian planting, fencing, stock exclusion and silt traps with transforming the stream into a crystal clear waterway. In the beginning there was no fencing, areas of bog, no defined stream edge and stock were grazing in the stream. That’s all changed. The stream has recovered over the past five years with the growth of riparian planting and trout coming back. Cawthron Institute freshwater ecologist Robin Holmes, who began studying the stream in 2012, says his results highlight the importance of fencing and riparian planting. The study found that 300 metres downstream from the fencing there was a reduced amount of deposited sediment which is vital for improving stream habitat. Fencing is the most important feature and it needs to be three to five metres back from the stream edge. Robin also found good populations of trout, eels and bullies in the stream which he attributes to the long-term rehabilitation work. He hopes to secure government funding for further studies on the stream which would also be supported by the zone committee.

Waikakahi Stream

work collaboratively and understand other people’s point of view.” Being the voice of the community and exploring issues, progress and solutions first-hand is another important role for committee members. “They need to seek the views of the community so that when their recommendations go back to the council they’re endorsed by the community. They have a very strong role in finding out what people are thinking, what people want to see happening and engaging with the community around water management.” Christina says the zone committees have been fortunate to have such a strong mandate from the regional and district councils and Ngai Tahu which has allowed them to make good progress towards achieving targets at a local and regional level.

Time for change The Canterbury Water Management Strategy was signed by the Canterbury Mayoral Forum in 2009 following 20 years of intense land-use change which had increased pressure on Canterbury’s rivers and aquifer systems. Public concern was mounting over deteriorating water quality while primary producers were calling for more water to be made available for irrigation.

“The Environment Canterbury commissioners have said to the zone committees if they reach a consensus on any planning recommendations they’ll adopt it as the starting position for preparing a plan and putting that through the Resource Management Act process. That’s been really powerful in

The Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) is a partnership between Environment Canterbury, district and city councils, Ngai Tahu and water stakeholders. Its vision is to enable present and future generations to gain the greatest social, economic, recreational and cultural benefits from our water resource within an environmentally sustainable framework.

terms of the zone committees feeling that they have a real mandate and that their recommendations will be acted on.” LG

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz For related articles go to our website. Search: Freshwater management

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AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

ENVIRONMENT

EMISSIONS IN REMISSION 3 responses to the carbon challenge Local authorities are uniting to push for urgent and more ambitious government action to address the effects of climate change. Ann Smith tracks three tactical moves.

uckland deputy mayor Penny Hulse announced the Local Government Leaders Climate Change Declaration at the Australia-New Zealand Climate Change and Business Conference in Auckland late last year. Since then the declaration has

become a significant point from which each council can look after the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of its constituents and contribute to a sustainable low carbon economy. Such a commitment requires a step up in thinking about how each organisation

can measure, manage and mitigate its greenhouse gas emissions. Irrespective of size, geography or population, each council’s first major move is to look at its greenhouse gas emissions sources and measure its carbon footprint. Stewart McKenzie, senior technical

SMART BUILDINGS Wellington City Council has launched the Smart Buildings Challenge in order to lower energy consumption in the capital city’s commercial buildings by 10 percent. Its own Wellington Central Library building is one of the first 25 participants. In the first five months it had already reduced consumption by eight percent. Managers measured and analysed the building’s energy. The first step was to update the meters to ensure they could capture meaningful data. Then Sandy Winterton, energy manager at Wellington City Council, could review the usage charts regularly. “Having meaningful data on hand – and making time to monitor it regularly – means you can apply a disciplined approach to finding a problem should it arise,” says Sandy. Regular monitoring of the measured energy usage identified two problems – previous building work and a failed building management system (BMS) controller – potentially saving the council around $24,000 a year in unnecessary energy costs.

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Wellington Zoo goes solar. Sustainability Trust CE Philip Squire, Wellington Zoo CE Karen Fifield, Wellington Zoo conservation manager Daniela Biaggio, and Sustainability Trust energy performance specialist and business developer Jonathan Parker.

SOLAR INITIATIVE For an organisation like Wellington Zoo, partly funded by Wellington City Council, finding solutions to reduce power use is challenging because of the high power demand from infrastructure like electric fences, veterinary equipment and heating systems for animal enclosures that are required to run 24/7. So investing in solar panels was an obvious next step to make a measurable difference after having already addressed unnecessary power use. The zoo has installed a 48-panel solar array and estimates this will save the

same amount of power used by one and a half average households per year. “Electricity is still the largest contributor to our carbon emissions profile which is why we installed the solar panels,” says Daniela Biaggio, the zoo’s conservation manager. Wellington Zoo became the world’s first carboNZero certified zoo in May 2013. Since then it has maintained its certification by continual reduction initiatives, like the solar panel project, and saving during that time approximately 10 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).

advisor at Enviro-Mark Solutions, notes the activities that often produce the most significant emissions include waste to landfill, building energy use, and fuel consumption from vehicle fleets. “A lot of what needs to be measured is obvious,” he says. “And often the process for identifying and measuring the emissions sources can produce ideas of how to manage and reduce the emissions.” Once measured, the greatest impacts of an organisation can be understood and managed more efficiently in order to reduce them. A sound understanding of the boundaries of its carbon footprint has already enabled Enviro-Mark Solutions to help Kapiti Coast District Council identify biosolids disposal practices at its landfill as the single biggest contributor to its emissions total. “Changes to these practices, along with conversion of our sewage drying from a diesel-powered boiler to a wood chip fuel boiler resulted in a

One of the emissions reductions initiatives that Kapiti Coast District Council has implemented – a wood-fired boiler for drying sewage sludge.

combined reduction in our emissions of around 6000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent,” says Jake Roos, senior advisor, climate change and energy at Kapiti Coast District Council. Technology presents step-change opportunities in emissions and cost reductions. Looking across all its innovations, Kapiti Coast District Council has so far reduced its overall footprint by 50 percent since becoming CEMARS certified, and is using the cost savings to fund new reduction projects. The complex nature of environmental

challenges that councils face is reflected in their diverse approaches to emissions reductions. Initiatives and technology abound to help government organisations get their house in order. They also mean there is no silver bullet. And each organisation will need to consider its own set of direct opportunities and challenges in order to respond to the carbon challenge. LG •A nn Smith is CE of Enviro-Mark Solutions. ann.smith@ enviro-mark.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF DUNEDIN DARK SKIES ADVISORY PANEL CHAIR IAN GRIFFIN.

DARK SKY: BRIGHT IDEAS

Dunedin’s light pollution dome as seen from Hoopers Inlet.

Dunedin has stellar night skies and the city council wants to keep it that way. So it is working towards the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) idea of ‘lighting what you need, when you need it’. Council is embarking on the upgrade of an aging street lighting network to LEDs – around 13,000 city lights in total. Recommendations on how to do this, while protecting and enhancing the night sky, have been made by the city’s Dark Skies Advisory Panel, which the council established last year to look at key city projects that have a significant external lighting component. The chair of the panel, local astronomer and Otago Museum director Ian Griffin, says the upgrade offers the opportunity to improve night sky vistas, save on energy and maintenance costs, and boost tourism as Dunedin explores becoming New Zealand’s first Dark Sky City. And switching 13,000 city lights will reduce the council’s carbon footprint, with estimated annual savings of 209 tonnes of carbon. The city has a ‘night sky city’ task as part of its energy plan and the council’s transport staff have been investigating and planning the upgrade in consultation with key stakeholders. Progress will be measured and reported on.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

TECHNICAL BRIEFINGS_STORMWATER

Continuing our series of technical briefings, we highlight two more papers presented at the 2016 Water New Zealand Stormwater Conference in Nelson earlier this year.

USING RAIN RADAR TO ESTIMATE THE SIZE OF FLOOD EVENTS Luke Sutherland-Stacey (Sutherland-Stacey Consultants), Tom Joseph (Mott MacDonald), Professor Geoff Austin (University of Auckland) & Nick Brown (Auckland Council).

ABSTRACT Understanding the timing and location of extreme rainfall is one of the most important parts of stormwater flood management. In most urban settings in New Zealand, city authorities make use of rain gauges to understand rain events. Often, understanding rain events is accomplished by classifying rainfall according to an average recurrence interval (ARI). Rain gauge networks take point samples of the continuous spatially varying rain field and it is difficult to know if the heaviest rain has fallen on a rain gauge or fallen elsewhere in a catchment. This rainfall variability can lead to large biases in determining ARI statistics for individual events when using rain gauge data, which in turn makes it difficult to assess the performance of infrastructure which may have been designed with a particular recurrence interval in mind. This paper presents a methodology for preparing rain radar data from the Auckland Metservice radar to allow generation of spatially continuous ARI maps, and demonstrates how the data can be used to gain understanding of the cause of flooding events for a test case.

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz Go to our website for the full paper. Search: bit.ly/Rain_Radar

PRESENTER PROFILES Luke Sutherland-Stacey is an independent environmental scientist specialising in measurement and quantification of changes in rapidly varying systems. Current work focuses on quantification of rainfall with radar for sewer and stormwater modelling applications. Tom Joseph is a technical director at Mott Macdonald providing technical support and strategic guidance to a team of computational

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modellers, data scientists and software developers. His current focus is the innovative delivery of technical content to non-technical users through web-based technology. Geoff Austin is a professor of physics at Auckland Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Faculty of Science. Nick Brown is stormwater flood planning manager at Auckland Council.

CHRISTCHURCH CITY MEGA MODEL – MAGIC OR MADNESS? Tim Preston (GHD) & Tom Parsons (Innovate Consulting / Christchurch City Council).

ABSTRACT The Canterbury earthquake sequence resulted in significant changes to the land drainage network in Christchurch. In order to better understand the impacts of the earthquakes on flooding, the Christchurch City Council (CCC) undertook an ambitious three-way coupled hydraulic modelling project across almost all of ‘flat-land’ Christchurch. This will be used by the land drainage recovery programme (LDRP) to support identification and prioritisation of repair and remediation options. It will also be a powerful tool for CCC to use to investigate resiliency of the city against climate change and sea level rise effects. The goal of the modelling was to establish earthquake effects and to develop a tool to inform options assessments. The level of detail required to accurately quantify the effects and to support investigations required modelling of the road corridors, 304 kilometres of waterways and 554 kilometres of pipes down to 300mm diameter across an area of 17,195 hectares. The high level of detail was required to capture the full extent of the earthquake changes, for example, settlement in areas remote from the main river channels. These project requirements have led to innovative modelling approaches. This paper briefly explains the scale of the problem, solution definition, model development and some of the early findings of the modelling. Some of the challenges that were overcome include: building a high resolution surface model following a significant change to the land surface; deciding how a preearthquake model should be defined; building a large complex model that runs quickly; dealing with inter-catchment flows in very flat topography; addressing data gaps; and meeting tight programme deadlines. The paper also explains the benefits and detriments of the approach and how an open dialogue between the council and the consultant led to the creation of a robust and powerful tool. LG

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz Go to our website for the full paper. Search: bit.ly/Christchurch_Mega_Model

PRESENTER PROFILES Tim Preston is principal engineer – water at GHD. A Christchurch born and bred civil engineer, his specialism in water engineering is inspired by the natural beauty of flowing water and the entertaining math. Significant career highlights have been leading the Christchurch City Council input into the operational response to sewer network restoration of service post the February 2011 earthquake and two years working as the resident engineer on a tertiary wastewater treatment

plant upgrade design build project in Puerto Rico. Tom Parsons has been helping Christchurch City Council for the past two to three years on the land drainage recovery programme as technical manager. His focus has been on developing the programme from inception through to delivery. Tom relies on his experience in stormwater concept design and modelling from a range of different environments, here and overseas.

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LYN PROVOST / ON GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY LYN PROVOST, CONTROLLE R & AU DITOR-G E N E RAL, OFFICE OF TH E AU DITOR-G E N E RAL. lyn.provost@oag.govt.nz

Message to local government You’re where accountability, trust and good governance connect.

A THE QUALITY OF GOVERNANCE IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR CAN BE IMPROVED.

ccountability and trust. As AuditorGeneral, these are possibly the two words I use most when I’m speaking to public sector organisations. We talk about it a lot at the Office, and I know that it’s talked about a great deal in local government too. One of those words is even in my vision for my Office’s work – to improve the performance of, and the public’s trust in, the public sector. A few months ago, I published my report Reflections from our audits: Governance and accountability. We have sent each council copies of that report. In it, we discuss trust and its intrinsic link to accountability. Local government entities use, and are responsible for, public resources. They also exercise power on behalf of the people. If people are to continue to support the democratic process, they must trust their local government institutions. This means trusting that their local councils, and the organisations they own, will: • act impartially and lawfully; and • use public resources wisely. It also means trusting that they, as citizens, will: • h ave equity of access to government services; • be treated fairly; and • h ave access to useful information about the activities and achievements of public entities. How can local government deliver in a way that ensures there is trust? Just as trust is linked to accountability, so is accountability linked to governance. Good governance encourages and can result in good accountability. In turn, accountability is a vital element of good governance. In New Zealand, there are quite rightly high expectations of the public sector. These expectations are the foundation of good accountability. In general, good accountability comes from being guided by principles that support trust

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between citizens and the public sector: • Openness – being transparent. • Value for money – using resources effectively, economically, and without waste while having due regard for costs and benefits, as well as the contribution to outcomes. • Lawfulness – acting within the law and meeting legal obligations. • F airness – meeting a general public law obligation to act fairly and reasonably. • Integrity – managing public resources with the utmost integrity. So what is good governance? That’s a great question – and one I want everyone in local government to consider. From the practices we observe and assess during our audits, we identified eight elements of good governance. I encourage you to use these to consider your own governance arrangements. In my opinion, the quality of governance in the public sector can be improved. It is not working as well as it should in some entities. Problems have occurred and will continue to do so. One matter for improvement is the clarity of role definition between the responsibilities of governance and management at both an organisational and project level. When governors do management’s job for them, it becomes difficult to hold management to account. A second matter for improvement is risk management. Too often the focus is on identifying risks, without sufficient attention to the management of those risks. My report identifies examples of both good and poor practice on these two matters. In the report I also highlight some emerging trends, such as new reporting standards, integrated reporting, co-governance and network governance etc. Part four on managing conflicts of interest is likely to be of interest to many of you. I trust that my report will support already good practices, and shed light on areas for improvement. LG

ELIZABETH HUGHES / LOCAL GOVERNMENT 101 E LIZAB ETH H UG H ES COM M U N ICATION. www.elizabethhughes.co.nz

Representative / participatory? What kind of democracy do people think they have?

I THIS TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE HAPPENED AND, QUICK AS A FLASH, WENT LARGELY UNNOTICED.

t’s been 14 years since local government changed from a representative to a participatory democratic model. With all this engagement, consultation, and participation going on, you would think citizens would feel more engaged, more part of the decision-making processes, more enlightened and more satisfied with their council’s performance. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Perhaps we need to go back to 2002 when the change was first enacted. Participatory democracy means participation by citizens in political decisions and policies that affect their lives – especially directly rather than through elected representatives. (Noting that iwi ‘governance’ has always been a participatory democracy.) This transformative change – which was about empowering individuals and communities to participate in decision-making processes – happened and, quick as a flash, went largely unnoticed. I don’t mean unnoticed by local government itself. I mean unnoticed by the 95 percent of the population who don’t actually spend their time thinking about local government. There were no social marketing campaigns, television debates, civic education, talkback champions or celebrations. It just happened. The machinery of local government got on and did its best to deliver this new-fangled participatory democracy. Councils invested enormously in: “we are listening”, “we need your feedback” and “tell us what you think” models. Accountability and transparency became the new buzzwords. Extensive best practice systems were developed, training undertaken and all the legislative boxes were ticked so councils could always say “the community had every opportunity to have their say”. Then, with the advent of social media (which is even newer than the legislative change), another significant tool for enabling participation evolved. So why the general grumpiness and unhappiness with local government? Why have citizens not trusted, used and embraced the very good systems and processes available to them? Perhaps this is the result of two conflicting ideologies operating at once. If you consider the demographics of the

average local government voter, many come from a time when local government was representative not participatory. So it’s not unexpected that this large bloc still votes for people they expect to ‘represent’ them – not surprisingly given they were never genuinely informed that modern local government now operates under a different model of governance. In other words, they are voting for representatives. They don’t necessarily expect, nor want, these representatives listening to a wide range of alternative views before coming to a decision. They just want decisions as per the slogan they voted for. However, because councils now legally and demonstrably operate in a participatory democracy, and have in place the very good systems and processes described above, this has significantly (and rightly) raised citizen expectations about the amount of say they should have, as well as the impact of that say. Access to social media in particular has given many more people the chance to contribute to the debate. The capture, management and response to these random, myriad and sometimes ratbag contributions can be quite challenging for both elected members and staff. Does any of this matter? Maybe not. But if local government is to correctly respond to the needs and wants of its communities, greater participation by all citizens (not just through voting every three years) should be at the core of what all councils strive to do. And, just maybe, the public needs to believe their council is authentic in what it is seeking to hear and understand. And since it’s highly unlikely that after all this time there will ever be a public awareness campaign on participatory democracy, public education has to come from councils themselves. That is, the elected members and staff – which might involve something more fundamental than those very good systems and processes. Or perhaps citizens – and councils – would just prefer representative democracy. LG

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz For related articles go to our website. Search: Elizabeth Hughes

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LINDA O’REILLY / ON LEGAL ISSUES PARTN E R, B ROOKFI E LDS LAWYE R S. oreilly@brookfields.co.nz

Welcome to acronym city Latest Local Government Act provides new CCO models.

A THESE ARE FAR-REACHING CHANGES TO THE MANNER IN WHICH LOCAL AUTHORITY SERVICES ARE DELIVERED.

s we continue our march towards Better Local Government we will need to get on top of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2), which is intended to be in force by the end of this year. What strikes me about the Bill, and previous amendments such as that in 2014 making new provision for local boards, is the extent to which the Auckland model, albeit with a degree of added sophistication, is now becoming available to the rest of the country. In pursuit of alternatives to amalgamations, the Bill facilitates and regulates the creation of multiply-owned council-controlled organisations (is MOCCO an attractive acronym?). These include water services and transport services MOCCOs (requiring agreement by the Local Government Commission), substantive council-controlled organisations (SCCOs), and multiply-owned substantive council-controlled organisations (MOSCCOs). All water services and transport services CCOs are SCCOs, but the amendments do not apply, except where specifically stated, to Auckland’s Watercare Services (WSL) and Auckland Transport (AT), or to any SCCO of Auckland Council provided for in the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 (Auckland Council Act). However, as in that Act, a water services CCO must not pay a dividend or distribute any surplus to its shareholders, and can propose bylaws. The powers and constraints on a transport services CCO are also similar to those applicable to AT, including in relation to the acquisition and disposal of land. The Commission will have the power, of its own motion, to initiate a reorganisation proposal for the establishment of a CCO, including a MOCCO or a SCCO. The Bill introduces as new instruments a service delivery plan – covering a minimum period of 10 years, and addressing investment, service levels, shareholders’ interests and funding – and an infrastructure strategy with a minimum 30-year horizon. Both must be approved by shareholders before adoption and are reviewed triennially. Water and transport services CCOs, and any SCCO where its shareholders require it, must have a service delivery plan and an infrastructure strategy.

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Shareholders in a SCCO are required to adopt a policy on accountability of that entity including a statement of shareholder expectations, reporting and planning provisions, and a statement as to any relevant strategic assets. Governance of MOCCOs is to be undertaken by a joint committee of shareholders. Elected members must not be appointed as directors. The Bill also provides for financial arrangements and funding of MOCCOs and SCCOs, including a prohibition on a SCCO imposing a capital charge for a service connection that is extended to apply to Auckland’s WSL. Instead a SCCO (including WSL) can make provision for such a charge by requiring an amendment to its shareholders’ development contributions policy (DCP). The SCCO prepares a draft amendment to the DCP that meets the requirements of the Local Government Act 2002, and undertakes consultation on that draft as required by that Act. The draft is then submitted to the shareholder/s. They must determine whether it is in order and, if so, amend the DCP/s accordingly. This determination is only as to proper process, and the shareholders do not have a say on the merits of the draft. All development contributions in respect of the capital expenditure of the SCCO that are to be funded by the amendment to the DCP are paid over, less any reasonable administrative costs incurred. A SCCO involved in the provision of network infrastructure is permitted to enter into a private development agreement in relation to that infrastructure. The engagement between shareholders and CCOs is also strengthened in the Bill. Councils must give their CCOs a reasonable opportunity to comment on the relevant proposed content of a long-term plan before commencing formal consultation. The statement of intent submitted by a CCO to its shareholder/s is to provide an opportunity to influence the direction of the CCO, and a basis for the accountability of directors to the shareholder/s. These are far-reaching changes to the manner in which local authority services are delivered, and notwithstanding the Bill is on the government’s fast track, we expect there will be a large volume of submissions for the Local Government & Environment Committee to consider before reporting back to the House on October 28 this year. LG

JEREMY ELWOOD / ON THE FUNNY STUFF COM E DIAN, ACTOR AN D WR ITE R. jeremy@jeremyelwood.com

Making spaces A piece of Pisa please.

I VENICE GIVES A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO THE IDEA OF WATERFRONT LIVING.

spent most of June travelling around Italy visiting Rome, Elba, Pisa, Florence, Venice and Verona. Just wanted to rub that in. Only kidding. Now, on with the column. These places are all quite different from each other but they share something in common. In terms of civic design, and functioning in the 21st century, they face a challenge that New Zealand towns don’t have to consider. They’re all really, really old. The challenges laid down by that are multiple. When most of your city is, at the very least, 500 years old, the restrictions on what you can build, and where, would make our Historic Places Trust crawl under a duvet and weep. Winding, cobblestoned streets were not built for modern traffic. I didn’t see a single SUV the whole time I was there, which for an Aucklander is a wonderful feeling. And that’s if you have roads at all. Venice gives a whole new meaning to the idea of waterfront living. Somehow, in amongst preserving the past, the future still has to exist. And while the tourists walk around staring open-mouthed at the beauty and age of these towns, amongst them walk regular folk who live and work there. Amazingly, it all works and I think there are some lessons we could learn, not from necessity but for the fun of it. Take Pisa, for example. We were staying in a lovely little hotel about a block from the river, above a junction between three streets which formed a small square roughly the size of the inside bit of a New Zealand roundabout. When we arrived, mid-afternoon, people from a restaurant and bar were setting up tables in the square for al fresco dining and drinking. The next morning, I was amazed to step out of

our front door into a full-blown marketplace, with several stalls selling fresh fruit and produce. The transformation was so complete that I wondered at first if I’d somehow found a different entrance but, no, it was the same small square. That evening was the celebration of Pisa’s patron saint, a festival of lights which deserves its own column, so suffice to say it was fantastic, and, Pisa being a university town with a distinctly Dunedin vibe (if Dunedin had summer evenings), a big party night. Sure enough, that same small square was transformed again, this time into an outdoor festival venue complete with a live band, and food and drink stalls. Here’s the thing, though. No matter what the set up was, afternoon garden bar, outdoor dining, open air market or student party zone, the roads leading into it remained open. Cars, scooters and taxis negotiated carefully through everything and life went on. We are starting to experiment with shared-use areas in New Zealand and I think we need to keep going. Instead of just saying “okay, so the shopping bit of town is here, the bars are over there and you can all live over there”, we need to be thinking about how to use spaces, particularly inner-city ones, for as much as possible. It brings a vibrancy, an immediacy and a life to a spot that can’t be replicated in a shopping mall or supermarket car park once a week. LG

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz For related articles go to our website. Search: Jeremy Elwood

Represents New Zealand’s Civil and General Contracting Industry

Civil Contractors New Zealand offers opportunities to work with Local Government on:

• Procurement strategies and practices that support a healthy contracting industry; • How to monitor contractors’ health, safety and wellbeing processes; • Forward work programmes that provide continuity of work to retain and develop contractor capability; • Environmental and quality issues.

www.civilcontractors.co.nz

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

HELMUT MODLIK / ON TRAINING H E LM UT MODLI K, CEO, CON N EXIS. HelmutM@connexis.org.nz

Disruptive technologies ahead Expect change that’s hard to believe.

E IT IS ESTIMATED THAT WITHIN 10 YEARS 46 PERCENT OF ALL CURRENT JOBS WILL BE GONE.

arlier this year I had the privilege of listening to some world-class thinkers at the Future of Work conference. One of these, Goran Roos, spoke about disruptive technology and its impact on automation and productivity. Goran is a Swedish academic, technologist, author and businessman. To make his point, he mentioned artificial milk being developed in California that will be available in New Zealand within five years. It will be indistinguishable from cow’s milk, contain the same nutrients, and be available at a fraction of the price. As Goran asked, what impact will this have on the dairy industry? On its workforce? On the economy? On New Zealand? Goran also spoke of rapid technological advances which are automating work. In the United States, for example, the largest segment of the legal workforce (paralegals) is being replaced by artificial intelligence that can complete much of their work for a fraction of the time and cost. Similarly, Starbucks is piloting facial recognition and auto-production technology. The development of such technologies is so rapid, it is estimated that within 10 years 46 percent of all current jobs will be gone. What will be the impacts of such dramatic change? Goran and other conference speakers were clear that the current trajectory did not bode well for most people without further progressive thinking. In New Zealand there are numerous examples of emerging disruptive technologies in the infrastructure industries, which are relevant to local government. For example, in the energy industry micro-generation and battery storage technologies are fundamentally changing how future demand and supply of electricity will be managed. The increasing prevalence of electric vehicles will significantly impact on our roading and electrical infrastructure and workforces in future. The design and construction of buildings requiring facilities for self-generation and micro-grid connectivity will emerge. New technologies are increasingly automating the tasks and machinery used in civil construction. These technologies are speeding up work,

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reducing cost and improving outcomes. They aren’t sci-fi. They are emerging now and at a dramatic speed. So what will these technological changes mean for local government, and how can we prepare? We can’t be certain exactly what will change and when, but we can improve our ability to respond to technological change and to shape its outcomes. To capitalise on the opportunities arising from these changes, we need to remember three key things: challenge assumptions, learn from others (especially internationally), and invest in people. The need to challenge assumptions is essential to achieve improved outcomes. Making more and more, for less and less, while using fewer and fewer people – our current approach – will not create a society most people want. Thankfully, our social and economic systems are man-made and we have the ability to change them. To do that we must first be open to challenging assumptions; how we organise and remunerate work, how we manage and run our organisations, how we fund our investments, or collect and even distribute revenues. We must be willing to challenge everything, to enable us to innovate and create the future we want. The reason for being open to learning from others is that these changes and their impacts are global. This means they are impacting on everyone, everywhere, and we have an enormous opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of others – public or private sector, competitors or otherwise. Finally and most importantly, our success or failure will flow from what is in the hearts, minds and hands of our people. We must therefore involve them, inform them, support them and invest in their growth and capability to understand and thrive amidst change. This is the best possible investment when facing an uncertain future, for it is through our collective wisdom and effort that the best answers will be found and delivered. My organisation and I are excited by what it all means. We are doing our best to thrive and to help those we serve do likewise. Why would we do anything else? LG

PETER SILCOCK / FROM CIVIL CONTRACTORS NZ CH I E F EXECUTIVE, CIVI L CONTRACTOR S N EW Z EALAN D. peter@civilcontractors.co.nz

Take a big-picture view Who’s working on your assets?

A AS CONTRACTORS’ WORK BOOKS FILL UP, CLIENTS WILL NEED TO ADJUST THEIR STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT QUALITY CONTRACTORS TO BID FOR THEIR WORK.

major part of any council’s activity is the procurement of services to construct and maintain community assets. Councils quite rightly rely on the capability, expertise and innovation that contractors bring to this work. As some of the big procurers of contract services, councils have a very real vested interest in ensuring that a healthy and competitive contracting industry exists so that there are companies to bid for the construction and maintenance work required. Having a big-picture view of what a healthy contracting industry looks like and developing procurement policies and processes that offer opportunities for all and a level playing field are critical both from a compliance and a commercial perspective. Understanding who is working on the construction or maintenance of your assets today and who will be working on them in one, two, five and 10 years’ time is something that shouldn’t be left to chance. Competitive pricing is always going to be a big factor. But with new responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act, issues around the integrity of construction inputs and a focus on the whole-of-life cost, asset owners need to take a big-picture long-term view. Having a range of businesses with the expertise and capability to bid for the work on offer is a prerequisite to a healthy and competitive market that delivers both short- and real long-term value to councils. Right now we are operating in a very competitive market with over $11 billion per

annum of infrastructure work planned for the next 10 years. As contractors’ work books fill up, clients will need to adjust their strategies to attract quality contractors to bid for their work. Councils need to structure their procurement policies on good information. That includes an up-to-date understanding of the contracting industry both nationally and regionally, the levels of work available, how resources (eg, people or aggregate supplies) are currently being used, and who the current and potential contractors are. It is critical to have that long-term holistic view of procurement and asset management. As the organisation representing civil contractors, we are able to provide that industry-wide view and ideas about how councils can support a healthy and competitive contracting market. Civil Contractors New Zealand Inc branches are keen to engage with councils to share information. Some of the questions to consider when thinking about creating a healthy and competitive contracting industry are: • Are we offering a range of available work that suits large, medium and small contractors? • Do we have a good forward work plan that provides continuity of work? • Is there some certainty that allows contractors to investment in people and plant? • Are our processes and contracts structured to encourage innovation and investment in new technologies? • Are our contractors supporting the development of the people we need to build and maintain our assets in the future? LG

AUGUST 2016 LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAGAZINE

LAWRENCE YULE / FROM LGNZ PR ESI DE NT, LOCAL G OVE R N M E NT N EW Z EALAN D (LG NZ). lawrence.yule@hdc.govt.nz

ABC standards Excellence Programme swings into action.

W LGNZ WELCOMES MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION ON THE PERFORMANCE OF COUNCILS.

hen we launched the new Local Government Excellence Programme last month with a call for councils to step forward I was optimistic the idea would be well received. So to have nearly a third of the sector put their hands up to become what we are calling foundation councils and be the first to be assessed was fantastic. To me, it showed a commitment from the sector to lifting and demonstrating our performance so that the communities we serve can have greater confidence in what we do. Whether it’s financial decision-making, the way we communicate and engage with the community, our governance and leadership, or our service delivery and asset management, all councils will likely have areas they can improve on. Most councils will no doubt also have areas they excel in. The Excellence Programme will highlight both the good and the areas for progress, and chart a way forward for local government improvement. Council best practice can be widely shared with the sector. Developed over the course of a year and in conjunction with the local government sector, the Excellence Programme is a comprehensive, transparent and independent standards system that will measure the performance of local authorities. So why do we need such a programme? It was developed in response to the 2015 New Zealand Local Government Survey, which showed there is an opportunity to not only lift the service and value councils deliver to their communities, but also do a better job of talking about the good work the sector does. The survey showed us there is a lack of public knowledge of the full range of work councils undertake. The programme aims to give councils the information they need to drive improvement and deliver top value for communities, and to increase public knowledge of what the sector does. Councils play a fundamental role

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in shaping and protecting the places New Zealanders live, work and play in. Local government across New Zealand holds assets worth $124 billion, employs 30,000 people and is responsible for 11 percent of all public spending, including on roads, transport, water and emergency management. The work councils do is of significance to both local communities and to New Zealand as a whole. It is critical that those tasked with setting and implementing important initiatives – either as elected members or as staff – are equipped to do so. Once their assessment is complete councils will have detailed information on how they perform in dozens of services and areas that are important to communities. Participants will be assessed every three years, given a standard from A to C, and the results publicised. Assessors are all independent and will be overseen by a standalone board. We are rightly proud of the programme and what it will achieve. It offers the sector the opportunity to take control of, and improve, its own performance over time. It is the right initiative at the right time and it’s been welcomed by many of our partners and stakeholders. By the time you read this the first councils to go through the process will have been selected and assessment work will begin shortly. This will be complete and the results published by early 2017. LGNZ welcomes meaningful discussion on the performance of councils and we feel the Excellence Programme offers a thorough and in-depth pathway forward. It is the “gold standard” for councils and communities, designed to achieve measurable change over time.Our members clearly think so too and are embracing the opportunity to be involved. LG

www.localgovernmentmag.co.nz For related articles go to our website. Search: Lawrence Yule

Freedom Camping With the tourism industry experiencing a boom urgent work is needed to make sure the communities which host large numbers of visitors can cope. There are several issues that need addressing, including the funding of infrastructure to support tourism. One area of particular concern is freedom camping. The negative effects of freedom camping are a major issue in some locations. Irresponsible use of public places has led to a hardening of opinion amongst much of the public, to the point where many don’t want to see freedom campers at all. Despite the good behaviour of many, the bad behaviour of some has cast a stigma over the whole practice, making it a national issue. To mitigate some of these negative outcomes councils have implemented a range of tools, including restricting access, making bylaws and education. Unfortunately these measures have not been particularly effective, due in part to a lack of suitable infrastructure (toilets included) to cope with the increased demand and the Freedom Camping Act 2011, which does not enable effective enforcement. Given the pressure on some parts of the country through freedom camping, Local Government New Zealand is advocating to give councils greater powers to ensure infringement notices are enforced, and in making sure the Freedom Camping Act, which gives councils the ability to issue fines to travellers who breach by-laws, is fit-for-purpose and effective. Councils need to be able to enforce by-laws and ensure fines are paid, rather than have travellers drop off their rental vehicle and leave the country without paying.

South Island councils have proposed three measures to address the issue: > That the Freedom Camping Act 2011 should be amended to allow any infringement fine to be tagged to the vehicle which is being used to cause the offence, forcing rental companies and vehicle owners to take some responsibility for the actions of their clients and collect fines on behalf of enforcement authorities. > Allow fines to be instantaneous, preventing individuals from leaving the country during the period when infringements are able to be paid. > Allow broader exemptions to the need for provision of camping facilities for those that wish to freedom camp in all areas and not just at “remote” camps. Summer is just around the corner and with New Zealand soon to be inundated with another wave of tourists decisions need to be made on how to handle some of the implications of increased visitor numbers. This is a major policy issue with ramifications for both the environment and, if handled badly, New Zealand’s international reputation.

< Given the pressure on some parts of the country through freedom camping, Local Government New Zealand is advocating to give councils greater powers to ensure infringement notices are enforced. >

EDITOR

Freedom Camping Webinar Freedom camping issues have grown in importance to New Zealand councils and managing the effects of freedom camping has proven challenging for a number of councils. EquiP will be providing webinars to assist councils to develop a freedom camping strategy to address issues in their own areas. With tourism having become our largest industry, growth has created significant issues in communities around the management of non-selfcontained campervans. The number of these vans has grown to 60,000 annually, placing pressure on facilities, environments and, in some locations, deeply concerning communities. There is currently no training in the sector on how to manage the issues or how to develop broad freedom camping strategies. David Hammond, an associate of EquiP, has designed a webinar to assist councils to recognise when a broad freedom camping strategy would be useful to address issues in their own areas. The webinar will explore the range of methods to build a freedom camping strategy to take a balanced and sustainable approach to the issue.

Learning outcomes During this 45-minute webinar, David will use examples from his broad experience with freedom camping nationwide to enable participants to: > Explore the contemporary research on the value that freedom camping brings to areas and how this value can be captured in a freedom camping strategy; > Describe the main problems which emerge in freedom camping and the range of methods to address these issues; > Identify and critique the range of regulatory tools suitable for councils to manage freedom camping; and > Develop a structure for a balanced freedom camping strategy suitable for participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own areas. This webinar would prove highly suitable for council staff in the tourism field, bylaws management or policy development. To learn more about EquiP's webinars, please visit lgnz.co.nz/home/ equip-and-knowhow/webinars This webinar will take place on 11 August at 11am. To register, please email natasha.meynell@lgnz.co.nz.

About David Hammond David Hammond provides advice to local councils through his company Hammond Robertson Ltd and is an associate of EquiP. He has been very active in assisting organisations including LGNZ and MBIE to understand the freedom camping issue, is frequently sought out by the media on the subject and is currently developing a freedom camping strategy for Nelson City Council. David recently completed the last nine years of his local government career as chief executive of two iconic tourism councils and assisted the sector by establishing the Tourism Council Workgroup in 2015. He was recognised for his contributions in the tourism field in 2010, winning both the Tourism Industry Association award for best project in local government in support of the tourism industry, and also won the NZ Post/SOLGM award for best project in local government that same year.

The EquiPTV Digital Platform EquiP provides a professional development offering that is effective in both cost and learning outcomes to build elected member capability. The use of digital learning activities such as webinars, online modules and interactive video tools is an integral part of our development suite. The EquiPTV digital platform will become home to all our digital learning activities. We are tremendously excited about the opportunities this suite of tools will bring to widen our audience and services. Delivery methods and mediums will be chosen to best suit the intended audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. The range of options on our easy-to-use EquiP TV platform will be designed to suit the needs of all learners and offer the following benefits: 1. Avoid travel costs > Participate in your own location. 2. Convenience > Participate at a time that best suits your schedule. 3. Individual solutions > Participate in digital learning activities at your own pace.

Customers First Taking time to reflect on how you deliver services, considering your customers' needs, and assessing your strategy and organisational alignment can be insightful and pay dividends. Service Level Reviews

Organisational Reviews

Procurement Reviews

Service level reviews are a powerful tool providing councils with real insight into their services as an enabler of putting people into homes, building a business and livelihood, or keeping people active, healthy and engaged in the community.

Dr Steven Finlay, EquiP Business Solutions Manager, recently led an organisational review of a council, which included a review of financial systems conducted by Philip Jones. Philip has over 20 years of financial experience in the local government sector and is a principal associate with EquiP.

EquiP's work also extends to genuine opportunities for infrastructure savings. EquiP recently completed a review of a council’s asset management contract and, using its contract model, enabled the council to save over half-amillion dollars per annum without any drop in their level of service.

As a result of the review, Philip worked with the council to develop new reporting systems which led to identifying cash surpluses that had not been transferred to a reserve, therefore making previously unallocated funds available.

EquiP also supports councils to identify opportunities to measure and improve against customer expectations. This enables councils to prepare for significant growth and empowers them to position their locale as ‘growth ready’.

Applying a customer-focused methodology to service level reviews assists councils to understand the current and future needs of its customers. Reviews explore customer insights and needs, and test the organisation's ability to meet these needs from a functional and organisational perspective.

EquiP delivers services that improve council performance across the four priority areas of the Local Government Excellence Programme. Elected Members Induction and Professional Development

Audit and Risk Workshops, Webinars and Forums

Executive Recruitment and Performance Programme

Audit and Risk Guide and Diagnostic Service

Governance Reviews, Strategy Development and Best Practice Guides

Infrastructure Investments

Media Training for Modern Leaders

Road Efficiency Group (REG) Regional Workshops

Political Decision-Making Workshops

Total Infrastructure Management System (dTIMS) Decision-Making Service

Service Level Reviews and Tourism / Economic Development

Section 17A Procurement Service

EDITOR

The Final Word Local Government New Zealand is concerned by increasing numbers of councils having to take community safety measures into their own hands as a result of a modernising police force. Technology is changing the way most businesses operate. Robots are coming for jobs and the world is going to have to adapt to the fact that many traditional ways of earning a living will be vastly different or, in some cases, no longer exist. Like many professions, policing is adapting to new technology. But if there is one job that can’t be completely supplanted by computers and technology it has to be police work. Ensuring police are resourced with the best devices to make the work they do more efficient and effective is an absolute must. But that technology should be a complement to authentic community engagement, not a replacement. When it comes to community policing the personal touch is still crucial. Concerns raised by LGNZ President Lawrence Yule about the Hastings District Council having to spend nearly a million dollars a year on CCTV, security guards, City Assist Ambassadors and community patrols have been echoed by councils around the country. Across New Zealand, and in both metropolitan and provincial centres, communities are feeling the pinch of changes to police strategy. In a Radio New Zealand interview in May on the concerns raised by Mr Yule, Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Grant Nicholls said the Police had to “revolutionise” to keep up with technology changes. He said police were balancing the old style of policing with modern methods like mobile police bases and a greater focus on prevention. “Policing is changing and modernising. Police have embraced technology,” he said. Mr Nicholls said this was not to the exclusion of traditional police work, but there was a balance to be found. The experience of many councils – 18 have responded to Mr Yule saying they were dealing with similar issues and having to use ratepayer money to fund

safety initiatives – suggests that balance is not being met. In the same interview Tararua Mayor Roly Ellis described an increase in burglaries, intimidating behaviour and petty crime in his area. There was a sense that police were “thin on the ground” and those who moved on were not being replaced. “If you don’t have a presence on the streets, the mice will play,” Mr Ellis said. Napier and Lower Hutt have also voiced concerns. It is accepted new technologies need to play a role in police work but the value of community knowledge, local relationships and a familiar face should not be underestimated. Local Government New Zealand is keen to start a conversation about how communities can expect to be policed in future. Is it the role of local government to step up and provide the safety services residents and businesses say are needed? Or does the Government need to increase resources for dealing with more minor crime and community safety? As Mr Yule says, “Communities need to feel safe to thrive.” A remit asking LGNZ to advocate for more resources for community policing was presented at its AGM in Dunedin on 24 July. The remit asks the Government to increase Police resourcing to ensure adequate staffing and coverage for New Zealand communities, and that Police chiefs are not forced to compromise community policing because of budget constraints.

< Communities need to feel safe to thrive. >

CONFERENCE 2016 72 nd annual conference, 3-6 August 2016 SKYCITY Convention Centre, Auckland

SMART CONTRACTING

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN Registration Information and Programme Updates available at: www.ccnzconference.co.nz

• Network opportunities to renew old relationships and build new ones • Participate in discussion forums • Celebrate success at the CCNZ/Hirepool Construction Excellence Awards formal dinner, plus the Z Awards lunch for the Z People Awards and Connexis Company Awards

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dr Paul Wood

Ian Taylor

PLENARY AND CONCURRENT SESSIONS

conference partners

Cecilia Robinson

(Partners’ Programme Presenter)

Your opportunity to be enlightened by informative plenary and concurrent business sessions tailored to both small and larger firms. Topics will include:

• Future Technology • Business Challenges • Procurement • Health and Safety • Technology • Project Delivery • Client Procurement Updates • Hirepool Award Presentations • Education to Careers • Legal • Civil Contractors New Zealand Technical Updates For further information on the Speakers including abstracts please visit the conference website

www.ccnzconference.co.nz

Conference Organisers, ForumPoint2 Conference Partners, 07 838 1098, paula@fp2.co.nz