Flexible Consent Conditions in Action

Stormwater Conference

One benefit alliance projects provide is flexibility for major project delivery, and in doing so reframe the design context to better manage performance, cost and risk. Resource consent conditions can be too rigid, stifling this flexibility that is so important to getting the best out of an alliance procurement model. Consent conditions can be seen as risks to be managed which can often undermine the safeguards that they were intended to provide, even preventing opportunities for environmental betterment.

Resource consents should ensure that environmental effects are managed and mitigated, with statutory standing that owners, designers, constructors and regulators cannot brush aside or ignore. For consenting, design of a large infrastructure project is usually developed to a point that enables assessment of effects and the setting of appropriate conditions to manage them, rather than to a final detailed design stage. Any subsequent change then results in a need for costly and time-consuming rework, re-litigation and resubmission, either by variation or applying for new consents delaying implementation, in a delivery context where such delay has significant cost implications. This can be the case even if the effects on the environment remain essentially unchanged or are even reduced.

For the MacKays to Peka Peka Expressway Alliance, the stormwater team proposed just three stormwater consent conditions to achieve performance against agreed standards, instead of traditional prescriptive conditions. This approach was considered to provide a good balance between design flexibility and certainty of environmental outcomes. Now that the detailed design and construction is underway, the effectiveness of this approach can be assessed.

Conference Papers Resource - Conference Papers Stormwater

1. Iain Smith & Malory Osmond.pdf

pdf
191 KB
21 Jun 2016