It’s no secret that in early 2023, New Zealand was hit by two separate extreme weather events: the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. These extraordinary events caused widespread, catastrophic flooding across large parts of the North Island, including Hawke’s Bay. In response, Government committed funding to clean up, rebuild and aid long-term recovery and protection. This funding was directed towards initiatives responding to what the government coined ‘NIWE’ – North Island Weather Events.
It included two national funding packages: an immediate $883 million to make urgent infrastructure repairs, assist with temporary accommodation, and provide business and community support; and $941 million for the NIWE Response and Recovery.
Confronted with widespread damage, community displacement, and urgency from both the government and residents, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC) had to pivot rapidly, moving from a disaster response to a long-term recovery and resilience building strategy.
The scale and pace required for delivery were unprecedented in the council’s history, necessitating a complete transformation in how it planned, procured and implemented infrastructure projects.
While large metropolitan council organisations deliver capital works to the tune of around $100 million a year, the challenge facing HBRC was how to deliver the $250 million infrastructure package in a four-year window - when historically the organisation had an annual spend on capital works of between $1m and $10m.
Cyclone Gabrielle may have tested the region’s limits, but the response has proven its resilience – and its improved readiness for whatever comes next.
Enter IPMO
To meet the challenge, HBRC established a dedicated Infrastructure Programme Management Office (IPMO) to oversee the delivery of the government’s investment.
“The IPMO was borne out of that rapid rebuild phase, when we turned our focus from repairing existing flood mitigation assets to designing and building new ones for the new NIWE programme,” says HBRC Regional Asset Manager, Jon Kingsford, IPMO’s creator and first NIWE Programme Director.
“From HBRC’s perspective, we were embarking on a programme whose scale was unknown to the organisation.
“Before Cyclone Gabrielle, we had a capital delivery team of only five. Immediately following the cyclone we completed a lot of very fast paced work we dubbed ‘Rapid Rebuild’.
The IPMO is part of HBRC’s Asset Management Group and its set up was swift; 20 positions were mobilised in four months, a new structure and new processes stood up, a dedicated project management tracking software tool implemented, all helped by consultancy firm BECA, brought in to ensure the right systems were in place.
From Wairoa in the north to Pōrangahau in the south, NIWE funding in Hawke’s Bay was destined for a range of practical and wide-ranging projects: new flood infrastructure builds, upgrades of existing flood assets, repairs and improvements to pump stations, smarter telemetry installations, and reinforcements of stopbanks – the steady, methodical business of making communities safer and more resilient to future floods.
The new flood infrastructure builds which HBRC has been tasked to deliver are in communities that were directly impacted by the government’s Land Categorisation process, which identified the requirement for flood resilience structures to make them safer to...
