The latest EBI Live session showed how engaging all stakeholders leads to better decision-making in infrastructure planning and delivery.
In 2019, the New Zealand government formed Te Waihanga, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission (NZIC), to help the country get the best from its infrastructure.
A key part of the NZIC’s work is engaging external stakeholders, making New Zealand’s infrastructure planning and delivery more transparent.
This helps inform their long-term strategy, build trust, and boost public support for their work – embodying principle 7 of the Enabling Better Infrastructure (EBI) guidance.
NZIC joined the latest EBI Live session to discuss how stakeholder engagement improves decision-making in infrastructure planning, ensuring choices are fit for the future.
Why is it important to include all stakeholders?
Sharing information is essential to delivering infrastructure projects.
It helps spell out and gather support for a long-term vision. It also boosts the trustworthiness of the government.
Before NZIC, the New Zealand government lacked a shared understanding of infrastructure. This led to planning challenges, industry confusion, and more expensive projects.
The NZIC has taken steps to build relationships with technical experts and the public, ensuring a variety of voices informs the country’s infrastructure strategy.
Drawing on insights from technical experts
The first key stakeholder group includes technical experts with specialist knowledge of infrastructure planning.
Expert insight helps strengthen infrastructure decision-making, ensuring industry intelligence and international best practice inform action.
The NZIC engages experts in two main ways:
1. Strengthening infrastructure planning
The NZIC has worked with external partners, including Enabling Better Infrastructure (EBI) specialists, to inform New Zealand’s 30-year vision for infrastructure.
The EBI programme set up dialogues to:
- provide strategic oversight of the NZIC’s first infrastructure plan; and
- peer-review their assessment framework for priority projects.
EBI specialist insights helped the NZIC refine the final framework, which was recently published.
2. Learning from existing projects
The NZIC commissioned Massey University to research 27 key infrastructure projects.
The university found that stakeholders (other government jurisdictions, the private sector, and the public) struggled to access information such as project documents and investment decisions.
They provided five recommendations, including making core documents publicly available for technical scrutiny.
The NZIC responded by making the national infrastructure pipeline visible to the public.
Gathering insights from the public
The NZIC has taken further steps to make its activities visible.
Before selecting and investing in infrastructure projects, the NZIC publishes its evaluation methodology and welcomes any opportunity to speak with the public and respond to their concerns.
They help make infrastructure projects easily understandable by simplifying information.
This includes charts, graphics, and metaphors that bridge the gap between the complexity of infrastructure and the message they want to convey.
As an example, NZIC acting general manager, Peter Nunns, said: “If you stop painting the house, eventually you're going to have to replace the weatherboards.”
This helps demonstrate the importance of housing maintenance.
Enhancing transparency to solve future concerns
There have already been clear signs that transparency can help develop and deliver New Zealand’s infrastructure strategy.
The national infrastructure pipeline has given the NZIC enough information to assess the likelihood of the market delivering on significant infrastructure projects.
Providing the public with open access to infrastructure information has informed expectations and helped create a smooth pipeline that can be relied on for the next 30 years.
