Strengthening the long tradition of mateship and cooperation across the Tasman Sea, the IPWEA and its New Zealand counterpart INGENIUM have merged to form what is now called the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia – with a total of seven united Divisions of public works professionals, including the newly formed IPWEA NZ.

By Gemma Black

In June this year, the cultural and educational hub of Dunedin – nestled on the picturesque Otago Harbour on New Zealand’s South Island – was the site of one of the most significant announcements in the history of the IPWEA and its New Zealand counterpart, INGENIUM.

The announcement of the merger was made at INGENIUM’s 26th Annual Conference, held in Dunedin from June 13-15, with an overwhelming majority of 89% of the Division’s 900 members voting in favour of the move. Following the announcement, outgoing INGENIUM President and inaugural President of IPWEA NZ Neil Cook also handed over to the current IPWEA NZ president, Braden Austin. 

“The big opportunity I want you to consider here today is that, along with our new identity and the increase in horsepower that comes from being part of IPWEA, we can build on the knowledge, methods and tools we have already developed,” Austin said in his opening speech as President of the new Division.

“The two organisations already had collegial arrangements and a strong working relationship in place,” Austin added. “It made good business sense to continue this approach and formalise these arrangements.”

Strong history, bright future

IPWEA President Paul Di lulio welcomed the New Zealand Division to the wider IPWEA community. “This is exciting; likely the biggest thing we’ll do in my time [as President],” he said at the conference. “We see this as a great opportunity going both ways.”

Fittingly themed “A climate of change”, the INGENIUM conference was an ideal opportunity to announce the merger – not least because the event showcased the experience and knowledge the New Zealand Division will bring to the wider IPWEA community. 

With a focus on the globally relevant problem of climate change – itself an example of an increasingly pressing need to cross borders and work together – concurrent sessions at the Dunedin conference covered stormwater and wastewater management, transport, asset management, and “business excellence and future building”. 

Keynote speaker, Paul Orders, Chief Executive at Dunedin City Council, presented a paper titled “Managing change, delivering savings”, focused on the importance of effective change management skills in a financially constrained local government environment. Of the merger, Orders says the announcement was widely welcomed. “The merger will increase the breadth and depth of capability available to the sector,” he says.

Michael Garbett, a New Zealand lawyer specialising in local government and resource management, presented a paper on “Heritage and earthquake-prone buildings” – tapping into an issue at the forefront of almost every New Zealand asset manager’s mind since the tragic 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes, which claimed 185 lives and caused billions of dollars worth of damage. 

As well as altering the legal and cultural landscape for heritage buildings in New Zealand, which was the context of Garbett’s conference presentation, the earthquakes forced a re-evaluation of the role of insurance in public asset risk management. In a June 2013 report, the NZ Auditor General, Lyn Provost, found that in many instances public assets had become uninsurable in the aftermath of the disaster.

However, these unique challenges and steep learning curves that New Zealand’s public sector has already faced in the past – including an economic and constitutional crisis in the 1980s – have resulted in the implementation of cutting-edge asset management practices, which, as with several but not all Australian states, are written into legislation across the board, and monitored by the Auditor General. 

Culture of excellence

Again in June 2013 – a big month for the public works sector in New Zealand – the Auditor General’s office published a report examining the management of New Zealand’s $210 billion worth of public assets, the most comprehensive of its kind in her office’s history. One of the key take-homes of that report, according to Austin, was that “local government is stronger than central government when it comes to asset management [in New Zealand],” but there is room for improvement. “That’s the reason we need to get our centre of excellence up and running,” he says.

During his forthcoming two-year tenure as President of IPWEA NZ, Austin is looking to drive the development of a Local Government Centre of Excellence for Infrastructure in New Zealand, taking advantage of the recent merger to draw on the experience of the existing Australian Centre of Excellence in Local Government (ACELG). “Therein lies a project in which we hope to be able to draw on the wider IPWEA experience,” he says. 

Of course, the merger itself is far from a first when it comes to cooperation between public works professionals across the so-called ditch (see ‘History in the Making’, p17). As Austin points out, that  “strong working relationship” existed well before the merger, and it has been far from trivial. 

“We’ve grown up together when it comes to asset management,” he says. “We’ve developed together documents such as the International Infrastructure Management Manual (IIMM), and that is a world-class document, the recognised manual around the world, and it has come about through a joint effort by Australia and New Zealand.” At present, two committees of both organisations, NAMS.AU and NAMS.NZ, are providing input to the development of ISO 55000 in International Asset Management Standards. 

“IPWEA and INGENIUM already have had close and cooperative ties over many years, and largely common goals and purpose,” says IPWEA CEO, Chris Champion.

While colleagues from all seven Divisions had the opportunity to meet and celebrate the merger at the recent IPWEA International Conference in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory in August, the true significance of the change will be marked when the next biennial conference is held in Rotorua, in the Bay of Plenty on New Zealand’s North Island. The event will be held in conjunction with that year’s IPWEA NZ Annual Conference, and the IFME World Congress, from 8–11 June 2015.

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