Infrastructure Renewal – Maximising Public Benefit Through Collaboration and Engagement

Given the design life of new network infrastructure (often greater than 50 years), significant infrastructure renewals provide opportunities to think strategically, rather than just replace like for like or take a business as usual approach within a single infrastructure department or business. Collaborating with other infrastructure providers and those impacted by network operation can stimulate thinking around how additional potential project benefits could be implemented and thus accrued across multiple parties.

This approach has been taken for the St Marys and Masefield Beach Water Quality Improvement Project, a large outfall network reconfiguration project lead by Auckland Council's Healthy Waters Department. Community and Mana Whenua stakeholders have worked (and continue to work) alongside Healthy Waters and other Council businesses to define, develop and deliver a project which not only meets the need for infrastructure renewal, but provides multiple other benefits to project partners and the local environment and community.

The project has developed out of a wider community desire to improve water quality in St Marys Bay. Already widely used for recreational activities, this is an area which has been identified for future development of community facilities both on land and in water; however there are a number of sources of pollution which are giving rise to water quality issues.

Whilst the project is fundamentally an asset renewal project, given the wide ranging project partners and key stakeholders involved during the early stages of the project, opportunities to provide wider benefits to the public have been identified beyond the original requirements of the scheme.

This paper describes the process undertaken and sets out some key learnings that have occurred throughout the initial project development. It demonstrates a replicable infrastructure planning process, which can successfully deliver on Local Government Act requirements for Councils to be accountable for ratepayers’ money, whilst meeting the current and future needs of communities.