There is an old adage in project management – there is fast, cheap and good. You can choose two.’
These days, the construction sector can hardly be accused of delivering poor product, but there are widespread calls for it to lift its game in other ways, including productivity, efficiency, diversity and environmental performance.
The Construction Sector Accord is an effort to bring about change – a shared commitment between government and industry to transform the construction sector.
Launched in 2019 with the vision of creating a thriving, fair and sustainable sector, the Accord is one of eight transformation plans established by the government to reshape key industries.
Since its inception, the Accord has grown into a platform to meet some of the key challenges facing the sector.
An industry under pressure
Without doubt, the construction sector is critical to Aotearoa New Zealand’s future. It’s an important contributor to our economy, a major employer and a key industry supporting the wellbeing of all New Zealanders.
Unfortunately, the sector faces several systemic and long-standing challenges that limit its performance. Some of these challenges restrict construction sectors across the globe while others are unique to Aotearoa. They include:
- fragmentation and minimal collaboration across the sector
- an ageing workforce and scarcity of skilled labour
- poor health and safety performance, including mental health
- low profitability and high-risk practices
- cyclical boom-bust performance
- poor procurement and risk management practices
- low productivity and being slow to innovate and adopt new things
- high environmental impact
- supply chain disruption.
The impact of these challenges becomes most visible through higher construction costs and longer delays. They also affect the sector’s ability to deliver the number of quality homes and infrastructure the country needs to support its growing population.
Planned transformation
In 2020, the Accord outlined how it intended to tackle these challenges.
Its 3-year Transformation Plan set out guiding principles for culture change and outlined initiatives to help the sector increase productivity, raise capability, improve resilience and restore its pride, confidence and reputation.
Despite a period of success, the COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of the construction sector so the Accord revised its strategy.
The Construction Sector Transformation Plan 2022–2025 updates the Accord’s vision, goals, focus areas, enablers and priorities and introduces mechanisms to help the sector work together to deliver.
It now concentrates the most effort and resources on four transformational areas – people, client leadership, environment and innovation – while reserving some capacity to respond to emerging issues and opportunities.
Aspiration and achievement
Within this framework, the plan outlines several ambitious goals for 2022–25:
- Increased capabilities of leaders to drive change – sector transformation requires leaders with the capability to lead their organisations towards better performance and increased resilience to cope with external and internal forces.
- A more skilled and diverse workforce that is future ready – the workforce needs to be able to deliver the work today and into the future. This will require new capabilities and increased size in critical areas.
- More thriving people and organisations – the sector is thriving when it shows sustainable growth where organisations and people can be successful in achieving their unique goals and ambitions.
- Greater Māori construction economy success – enabling greater prosperity and mana for Māori individuals and organisations will help better-quality broader outcomes that will flow intergenerationally to tangata whenua.
- Reduced waste and embodied and operational carbon – in line with Aotearoa’s environmental commitments, waste and carbon must be reduced in the sector.
- Increased productivity through innovation, technology and an enabling regulatory environment – lifting productivity will require public and private organisations of all sizes to adopt new practices, tools and products that can only be achieved through innovation, ranging from incremental to disruptive.
Construction future for Aotearoa
The Accord uses a range of measures to monitor the sector’s progress towards these goals at both a programme and individual initiative level.
This evidence-based approach means the Accord can adapt and improve its initiatives, provide some degree of confidence that its activities are working and ensure the sector is indeed heading in the right direction.
A year since the revised plan was rolled out, the Accord has several initiatives, programmes and workstreams either in the pipeline or already under way. They range across all the transformation areas.
Some notable examples include a programme for next-generation leaders to identify and support upcoming construction leaders, carbon and waste measurement tools to help businesses reduce their environmental impact and a health and safety strategy to tackle high rates of injury, death and suicide within the sector.
‘The Construction Sector Transformation Plan 2022–2025 builds on the momentum that the Accord has achieved over the past 3 years,’ says Andrew Crisp, Accord Steering Group Co-Chair.
He says that the Accord’s role is not to direct the construction sector but to enable and support behaviour change through industry and government collaboration.
‘We are confident that the work outlined in the plan will build on the work already under way in our sector and reinforce existing partnerships that are already changing culture and behaviours to achieve a safer, better skilled, more productive industry that benefits all New Zealanders.’