Rebuilding New Zealand

If you call it a plan.
It's doing exactly the same as we've done for the last 30 years. Hasn't worked, so why continue doing it?
And what is the logic of dropping the Auckland fuel tax, completely fucking the current works programme, then in 3 years time, replacing the Auckland fuel tax with the exact same fuel tax?

All it is achieving is a delay of the same projects (give or take one or two) by 3 years. 

There are no new or innovative funding ideas. I was expecting
A) ditching all fuel tax and going to a universal RUC
B) facilitating private equity investment in key infrastructure projects. Noting that the NZ Super Fund wanted to build the light rail to the airport. Super Funds live and breath on long term, low risk infrastructure projects. It is beyond me why the NZ Super Fund (at one end of the Terrace in Welly) can't go across the road and have a yarn with NZTA at the other end of the Terrace and thrash out a plan to fund and own some key pieces of infrastructure.
C) aside from B) above, private equity and PPP's. That is how we got Transmission Gulley after 50 years of talking about it...

There has also been talk of congestion charging. I'm buggered if I know how that could possibly work in any NZ city, with a complete lack of viable PT, lack of population density and the near impossibility of efficiently ring-fencing any city centres. I was in London when it was rolled out. London has a city centre. Auckland has distributed town centres forming a conglomeration referred to as a Super City.

For Simeon Brown to roll out some tweaks to petrol tax and call it "A Plan" is laughable, embarrassing and sad all at the same time. I really was expecting more from National.

I'd say the problem was scope and design. You can waste money paying too little for something. If you try and nickle & dime a fix, it most often wont work. Especially with roads.
So it isn't an issue of who does the civil works, the issue will be with the scope of the works. A quick reseal is cheaper and easier than fixing all the drainage around the area to stop the sub-base getting wet, doing a full-depth rebuild, or, heaven forbid, stabilising the ground to stop it slipping in the first place.

That all still sits with NZTA and the government to the extent that they govt set the budgets. Don't forget it was the previous National govt that slashed the highways renewals budgets that lead to the pothole epidemic in the first place.

Changing to a Ministry of Works wont affect any of those issues. Contractors work to the scope. If the scope is wrong, it doesn't matter how good the contractor is, the outcome wont meet it's objectives (i.e. have a durable road for the next 20 to 50 years).

An example of that is all the slow slips we see around the place. Visible as road surface movement, sometimes with cracking and treated with over-banding. It is never dealt with pro-actively. NZTA wait for a cyclone or flooding event, everything falls apart, we all have a big cry, and govt stumps up with disaster recovery budget to fix it properly. Anyone with roading technical competence know exactly where the issues are, but they don't get the budget to deal with it until after a big disaster. That, and you don't need resource consent to fix a road under emergency works. True story.

There is a paradox there. The more risk you put on a contractor, the more it costs you.
This is a standard govt department practice, load up the contractor with risk, because you think you are getting good value for money doing that. Doesn't explain why MoE classrooms cost so much.

Contractors are obligated to price what is in the tender. If the Ministry has cut corners with scoping the work or documenting everything in the tender, then the contractor is going to get nailed with surprises that cost them money. So they price that in.

For roading, and most civil jobs, the Principal (as in the client, NZTA, MoE etc) generally do geotech investigations to understand if the design will work, and how much RISK there is of 'unforeseen ground conditions'. The thing with geotech investigations are they cost a fortune, and often still don't give you any reliable answers. Comfort Zone could attest to that. The thing with roads is you have to close them and spend moon beams on traffic management just so a geotech rig can get out and do a couple of core samples.

Pre Super City, there was one Council I had a lot to do with that would skip ALL geotech investigation, but they would always pay without quibbling any contractor claims for 'unforeseen ground conditions'. Council knew they were up for whatever the cost was going to be due to the ground. Putting up TM, digging it up, taking photos of the ground, putting it all back, reinstating the road, then putting the photos in the tender, just so the contractor could come back, put up the TM and dig the same ground up, then put the pipe in, put all the ground back, reinstate it again... Councils view was it was better for the contractor to put the pipe in the first time. It did rely on a level of openness and co-operation between Council and Contractor. When we had small councils around Auckland you could do that. Now we have a Super City? Not so much. At NZTA level? tell 'em your dreaming.

On the same line of risk and cost, I attempted to do work for Housing NZ (Kaianga Ora) once. All of the industry use a standard 2 page ACENZ contract. Kaianaga Ora insisted we had to use their contract. It was 36 pages long. It took me a full day to read it. It put all the risk on my company. Consequently I had to go up through 3 layers of management to get agreement to use it. That took another 8 hours. The actual work they wanted me to do was between 4 and 12 hours worth. I'd already spent 16 hours ball-aching with their non-standard contract. But they wanted the work done ASAP to inform a property purchase for a social housing project. Oh, and while wanting it done ASAP and with all risk on us, they wanted to pay us 60% of the market rates. Conversely I could do the same work for an establish private developer, I could inform him of the costs and risks of providing services to the land for a multi-unit development, I'd do it on time charge at 100% rates, he'd never quibble the invoice and pay it on the 20th, dead on time. You'd never guess who bought the land and built the housing? It wasn't the govt Ministry that made us crawl through hoops and loaded all of the risk onto us, most of the risk being due to their ineptitude.

Like I say, you can waste money paying too little for something.

Been watching 2 sets of road works on SH12 for 3 weeks now.
Small slips so they installed some armco while they wait for crews to free up and fix them. You know the Armco that V8's drive into at 250kph and bounce off.

But both sets have 3-400 road cones each plus a mid sized truck with 2 people in it just sitting by the armco, both are usually asleep. Either side of both is a ute with big flashing light on the back,1 person in it on their ph/masturbating or asleep.

Not a single worker or thing has happened at either site over that time.

WTF? are they just sitting there for, who the fuck is paying for that, us!

Motor way closed at night at Drury,1 truck parked across bridge so forced off MW,fair enough but whats the 2nd truck doing at the other end when access is blocked by truck on the ramp?? Oh it gets better with their signage vehicles,ute on shoulder showing to use right hand lane as you get closer truck with arrows says use left hand lane,50kph signs out with a stop go man,stop/go   sign  goes green then you have to follow a pilot truck doing10kph so theres 3 fuck tards collecting a wage with 2 of them with different arrow status .Get down to Karapiro,road closed detour at the mobil,slow down to turn left.Next thing theres a man with a flag telling you to carry on down the highway,get to the works and workers are like,where the fuck did you come from.

Somethings you just cant make up,are they all on drugs?

interesting take on DOC's closure of the track to Cathedral Cove with lots of photos
www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/03/is_cathedral_cove_impassable.html
Farrar concludes
The track was far less challenging that some of the tramping tracks in the Remutakas. They also have slips, where you have to detour around. It's not rocket science.
The test for me is whether I would be comfortable taking my four and seven year old on the track. I actually do get quite paranoid about dangers to them. If walking along a rural road, I constantly look for a fence or tree I could try and throw them over should a car skid out of control. So I take their safety seriously.
Absolutely without hesitation I would take them on the Cathedral Cove track in its current state. In fact they have done much more challenging tracks in the Remutakas. At no stage on the walk, was there a portion where you felt if there was some sudden erosion you might end up down a cliff. It is a lovely wonderful walk, and it is a travesty it has been closed for over a year.
The local who e-mailed me saying a couple of people could fix it in three days was, if anything, over-estimating the time. The only two things you really need to do are rope off the slip area near the end, and mark the detour, and do some steps at the end of the track. There was absolutely nothing else that was a challenge.
All tracks have risks of slips, but they are weather dependent. You could simply close the track three or four days a year when the weather is terrible, rather than have it closed for two years.
Perfect is the enemy of good, and this is a very good track. It is a beautiful walk, and a stunning destination. It's sad that so many people have missed out being able to access it. The announcement that they plan to reopen it by next summer should be a limit, not a target. If they had the will, it could be opened within a week.

Hope the minister keeps the pressure on DOC to rectify this by summer