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Are New Zealand infrastructure investments paying off?
The Infrastructure Commission has said that New Zealand infrastructure spending is in line with that of other wealthy nations but that the value enjoyed from that spend is less than in those other countries.
The Infrastructure Commission director of economics, Peter Nunns, stated that there is new research finding that the efficiency rating of our building infrastructure ranks in the bottom ten percent of those same countries.
This new research also found that seventy percent of infrastructure consent costs ends up with consultants. The drafted thirty year infrastructure strategy released last October (2021) sets out the factors that make for an ideal infrastructure system and what New Zealand needs to change in order to meet higher expectations.
The factors laid out included, amongst other things, workforce planning, materials supply, consent processes, and decision making processes for renewable infrastructure like windfarm.
Nunns has stated that in order to improve, “we're going to have to look at a whole bunch of small and big fixes in a whole bunch of different areas, some of which we've tried to lay out a path to doing."
Commission research showed in recently published research that infrastructure project consenting costs have been increasing while the availability of key materials has been increasingly constrained.
"This makes it difficult to deliver infrastructure efficiently. We need to address these types of systemic issues to get good value from infrastructure investment.
Nunn went on to state that previous governments have invested in the infrastructure of New Zealand, but that more value could have been gotten out of the amount spent.
“To do better, we need to better understand cost performance and look for areas we can improve."