It probably seems obvious that the architect should be engaged at the beginning of the project. However, the first priority after a major earthquake will be emergency repairs to protect people and assets, and emergency repairs are normally be designed by an engineer, with structural safety as the primary driver.
Emergency repairs need to happen quickly, before strategic decisions have been made about the future of existing buildings, and they will often involve a significant investment of effort and money. This investment can be a factor in deciding to repair a building rather than demolish it, and the freshly completed emergency repairs may become a permanent fixture of brownfields projects, potentially constraining the architect’s design options when it comes to form and function. In one of our projects, engineer-designed structural strengthening reduced available floor space and ceiling heights in some areas.
Social space in Rehua
Ideally, architect and engineer would be engaged at the same time and would bring complementary perspectives to the design process. This is not always possible during disaster recovery, and safety will always be a particular concern at this time. But, be aware that design decisions made before the architect is appointed may influence the finished building.
After the earthquakes, our construction market was upscaling at super speed. People were coming in from other countries at all levels, bringing with them ways of operating which could be different to New Zealand expectations, and different to each other. Assumptions made on all sides created friction.
Understanding the how the local construction market ticks is important to project success, so we recommend providing a cultural induction to the New Zealand operating environment for overseas recruits and consultants.
One area where we needed specialist input that couldn’t be found in New Zealand was laboratory design. Our Australian consultants worked to the industry standards for their country in terms of the level of design detail specified, but this was less than would be expected by a New Zealand contractor, particularly in such a highly technical context. The consultants had tendered in good faith based on their understanding of the input required, but there was a mismatch between their way of operating and local expectations, and our lead local contractor had to fill the gap.
International design consultants may also be unfamiliar with the local market and so recommend suppliers they know. Ensure that Project Managers scrutinise supply decisions to ensure the most cost-effective and timely solutions are obtained, for building fit out as well as construction.
Good University Councils run successful academic institutions, not major capital works programmes. But, during disaster recovery, they are suddenly asked to behave like a property owner, managing a construction portfolio well beyond the dollar value of many commercial operations. And that’s a big ask in an already high-stress environment. If your governance body is faced with that challenge, there are three things we believe require particular attention.
Focus on decisions, not data
Business as usual reporting to Council tends to focus on information provision. During recovery, reports need to support decisions. That shift requires differently structured reporting templates and simplified board papers with clearly articulated decision points. The goal is to give Council members the confidence to act.
During normal operations, decision-making cycles are usually tied to the Council meeting schedule. In our case, there was a 6-week lead time for Council decisions, and it was necessary to wait another 6 weeks if a proposal was referred back for clarification. This does not meet the needs of a fast-paced construction programme. Decision-making and communication processes must be flexible enough to allow Council to act in a timely fashion, and some progress-critical decisions may need to be taken out of cycle.
Review delegations
It may also be necessary to reconsider the level at which Council sign-off is required. UC’s recovery programme was originally estimated at $20M. The UC Futures projects expanded this to a budget of well over $350M. Delegation levels and processes need to keep pace with this increasing complexity.
One strategy we used was to delegate contract signing authority within specified financial limits to the Vice Chancellor. We also broadened the types of decision that could be made by the Project Control Group (PCG). Early on, for example, our PCG simply had the power to halt progress. All other decisions had to be referred to the Council. Later the PCG was delegated to approve changes within the project contingency, but anything that affected overall budget still went back to Council.
As well as achieving the required pace, delegating some decisions frees up Council time to focus on higher-level programme issues and organisational strategy.
UC campus prior to the demolition of earthquake damaged buildings
Build trust
For its part, the Council needs to trust the skills of the University’s staff, particularly the specialists brought in to deliver projects. The Council will be asked to make faster and riskier decisions than it might be accustomed to during normal operations, and probably in areas that might be relatively unfamiliar. In this situation, it is not surprising that Council’s instinct could be to seek more information before acting, but this needs to be weighed against the practical realities of project delivery. It takes time to achieve the right balance, and trust needs to be earned, but it is important to recognise the differing priorities of organisational governance and project delivery.
This might be the ultimate crystal ball question. Based on our experience, we would certainly advise not to do large-scale repairs without a very thorough understanding of the costs and issues involved.
There are probably two main arguments for repairing a damaged building rather than demolishing it and starting again. Here’s how they played out for us:
It will be quicker
Our primary strategic goal was survival: keep the doors open, keep students and staff engaged, and keep moving forward. Refurbishment was often projected as the quickest route back to operation. However, emerging repair and regulatory complexities, contractor shortages and supply constraints delayed one repair project by more than two years.
It will be cheaper
The difficulty here is twofold. You won’t really know the full nature of the damage you are dealing with until the project is underway, and, after a major disaster, the regulatory environment is likely to be in a state of flux. Certainly, for us, building regulations shifted during the recovery period, requiring revised and more costly repair solutions in several areas.
Chemical and Process Engineering laboratories, 2016
Our investment decisions were based on business cases that gave thorough consideration to the repair or rebuild question. The process included a pause and challenge point to review the pros and cons of repairing or rebuilding after the work was partly completed. However, changing from repair to rebuild mid-stream is a difficult case to argue. We were already some distance down a chosen path, with significant resource invested. It is hard to stop the juggernaut of a major capital works project once it is underway, and the more prudent decision appeared to be managing the remainder of the works closely to achieve the best possible outcome in the circumstances.
It is also important to consider the design and functionality compromises that might be associated with building repair. For us, additional internal structural elements were required to meet new building regulations in one project, and these reduced the usable square meterage of the end result. Also, new working behaviours and pedagogical shifts may be more difficult to introduce in retrofitted spaces than in a purpose-built environment.
It is easy for repair to appear a logical progression from emergency works, but it is vital to understand the longer-term implications of continuing down that path. On the surface, repair might seem a more palatable option for conservative decision makers. But our experience has shown that repair contains a significant element of risk. Repair projects can produce excellent results but getting there can be an uncomfortable experience. Would we do it that way again with the benefit of hindsight? Not necessarily.
Students working in the new Chemical and Process Engineering laboratories, 2017
It’s far from a clean slate, but a major natural disaster can be a motivator for change on a scale that is rarely seen in universities.
For us, the change was not entirely driven from within. As it became clear to Central Government that the University needed support to bounce back, they sent us an equally clear message that this could not be an unquestioned return to what we had been before the quakes. They required us to go back to basics to consider our core academic purpose and whether this was still the best model to assure continued relevance and stability in today’s tertiary environment.
The process concluded that remaining a comprehensive university created greater certainty of maintaining our market share than choosing a specific disciplinary specialisation. However, we also agreed that it was necessary to articulate UC’s unique point of difference, and to use the opportunity to reposition our organisational culture alongside our built environment. The initiatives we settled on were called ‘Transformations’ and were grouped into three areas:
Graduate Attributes
We established a set of benchmarks and programmes which would feed into every degree to ensure that all UC graduates are:
Biculturally competent
Engaged with their community
Employment ready
Globally aware.
In addition to their specific academic skills, employers can be assured that a UC graduate is competent in all these areas.
Student First
We wanted to become more student centric and easier to deal with. Specific projects included a major review of our student management system, and improvements to make online enrolment simpler, faster and more student driven.
The large distillation column in the Chemical and Process Engineering Special Purposes Laboratory, 2017
Organisational culture
We looked at ways to improve how we work together, pushing back against the atomistic tendency of traditional academic environments. Our building projects contributed to this Transformation by including a deliberate emphasis on shared work and socialising spaces for staff and for students, and the feedback so far is that this has been largely successful.
As the intensity of the recovery phase settles, we are now taking the time to step back and consider our next priorities for continued organisational development in a reinvigorated operating environment.
Safety signage at the entrance to the Mechanical and Civil Engineering wings, 2016
We operated a major construction programme within a live campus. At the height of the rebuild, more than 45% of campus was under construction with five sites managed by different contractors, and all the usual work of a university going on around them. In 2014, we had 12,500 full time equivalent (FTE) students, and 1,900 FTE staff.
Plus, as anyone who’s spent time on a university campus knows, apart from the usual health and safety considerations, there are student high spirits to take into account. For example, as soon as you introduce anything as appealing as a crane to a campus, it’s only a matter of time until someone decides it needs to be climbed, or to have a road cone hoisted on top of it.
As well as our legislative responsibilities, a significant injury to a student could cause serious reputational damage for the university, so we took health and safety extremely seriously, and committed additional resources to it from the outset. Over five years and numerous construction and repair projects, we had no major injuries on building sites or the wider campus. Two working groups put in place early in the rebuild contributed significantly to that result.
The Campus Construction Safety Group
We made health and safety everybody’s business by establishing a university-wide coordination group. With representatives from Facilities Management, Communications, the University Students’ Association and project teams, this Group’s brief was to take a corporate level view of health and safety, to establish organisational messages and processes, and generally to think ahead and solve potential problems before they arose.
Specific outputs included:
Traffic management plans to ensure staff and student safety
A campus-wide risk register
High-profile and targeted safety signage
Regular communication with staff and students in affected areas
Advance warning of periods of high noise, vibration or other disruption
Good relationships with campus neighbours and the surrounding community.
The live campus during construction, 2017
The Contractors Round Table
We also asked our contractors to take a broad view of health and safety and to collaborate on strategies and responses. This was a significant culture shift for many of them, but the effort paid off in the long run.
The Round Table met monthly bringing together representatives of the university’s Facilities Management team for a campus-wide view, and all major contractors. Each meeting began with a joint walk through of one of the sites, followed by a collective debrief on issues and solutions observed.
Over time contractors started to share new initiatives from their companies, and to discuss things that went well, as well as what went wrong, and how they responded. From this, the Round Table was able to take the lead on a series of collaborative initiatives, including:
Standardised Protective Personal Equipment across all sites
Consistent drug and alcohol policies
Agreed rules for transport of materials
Common emergency response procedures
Shared communications for external messaging.
The benefits of this collaborative approach were acknowledged by all parties, and the protocols developed across campus and between construction sites have provided the basis for a similarly integrated approach on future projects. We learned that it is possible to manage a construction programme safely within a functioning university, and that this success can have wider benefits for the university, the contractors and the projects.
A broken market can require engagement and tendering processes than are quite different to what is expected during normal operations. But this may not be obvious to programme overseers located outside the disaster area, where business as usual conditions largely prevail.
In our case, the Crown Funding Agreement signed with Central Government anticipated a number of standard processes, including open tendering. Open tenders can be an effective means of reaching a wide supplier pool and demonstrating process control under normal public sector operating conditions. However, a complex capital works programme delivered in a post-disaster market with outcomes that are linked to organisational survival, is likely to require a more agile approach.
The process-heavy nature of standard open tendering can be expected to deter supplier participation in a market where demand for tier 1 and 2 contractors outstrips supply. But reaching an adequate pool of suppliers is only part of the story. The procurement process also needs to focus on project delivery, and procurement staff capacity will probably need to grow to keep the process moving in line with project demands.
At the time of the earthquakes, we had a mature procurement model, but it was designed for business as usual. The volume, complexity and pace of procurement required by the recovery programme challenged us to find other ways of working. In the end, we used a mix of open and closed tendering, and learned lessons in three important areas along the way:
Contracting model
Open tendering requires the purchaser to provide precise specifications, and this can be challenging for specialised buildings with significant construction durations in a shifting regulatory environment. The Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) contracting method can assist by inviting supplier participation at detailed design. This has the potential for innovative solutions and increased project ownership by suppliers. It can be more expensive up front due to the internal resourcing required during design, but, if managed well and if the contractor is retained throughout the project, it is likely to result in fewer changes during construction, and to be cheaper in the long run than dealing with contract variations.
College of Engineering, April 2016
Value vs cost
Open tendering can emphasise the lowest cost solution. In the recovery environment we found it was more important to assess project-level decisions on the basis of value. Our typical tender evaluation ratio was 70% attributes, 30% pricing.
Supplier relationships
Closed tendering helps to build relationships with suppliers. In the case of one brownfields project, we were able to engage with the same architectural firm that had designed the building originally, and this resulted in time, cost and process efficiencies. We would recommend factoring such existing relationships into supplier evaluation criteria.
Our experience shows that a single organisational procurement model is unlikely to be effective during disaster recovery. However, flexibility must be balanced with the need to demonstrate due diligence. To achieve this, we engaged an external probity auditor to provide independent scrutiny across our procurement processes. Of course, this person also needs to be flexible, and to take the circumstances into account.
Rutherford Regional Science and Innovation Centre, 2016
You will almost certainly need to invest in additional skills to deliver a significant capital works programme. Appropriately skilled people will be in demand, and everyone will be dealing with their own personal disaster recovery experience.
Be strategic
We recommend establishing a personnel engagement strategy as part of recovery planning from day one. It should include provision for limited-term engagements to ensure flexibility as programme requirements evolve.
When it comes to recruiting, you will be competing in an inflated market, and you are likely to need to bring in people from overseas. If so, don’t treat the NZ operating environment as transparent. Provide an induction to the local market to avoid later issues that could arise from unspoken assumptions.
You may also need to alter your recruitment priorities. For example, tertiary qualifications may be critical to university recruiters under normal operating conditions but less so during disaster recovery.
At the outset, we recognised a need for additional capital works expertise. This included senior management appointments to ensure consistency across the programme, as well as Project Managers and procurement specialists with construction backgrounds. We also appointed Project Managers to work with end users. These people were a critical link between the project team and the people who would occupy the buildings. They represented the users’ interests and worked closely with the internal construction Project Managers to anticipate resource requirements in areas such as fit-out and relocation planning for staff and students. This is a challenging role but is acknowledged as a success factor by all parts of project delivery.
A trap to watch out for is building capacity for the building programme, but not the related BAU areas. For example, our Facilities Management team manages our built assets over their lifetime. They were already stretched with normal duties as well as responding to other disaster recovery issues, and this resulted in reduced Facilities Management input into detailed design and value management for the capital works projects. This situation creates a long-term risk around costs associated with building management and maintenance.
College of Engineering Core fitout
Disaster recovery doesn’t only happen at work
It is important to remember that people’s wider lives and disaster experiences will impact on their work. They will be dealing with broken homes and frightened children, and many will be grieving for lost family or community members. People are typically fatigued and risk averse, and that may lead to a bias towards adopting apparently easy solutions.
This applies right from the highest level of governance through to the casual hammer-hand on site. People living in post-disaster communities are in a constant state of heightened stress. Wellbeing monitoring should be part of every organisation’s recovery strategy and should be appropriately resourced.
Minister Paul Goldsmith and Chancellor Dr John Wood being shown around the College of Engineering by Alex Hanlon, Executive Director, Learning Resources, February 2017
Our business as usual relationship with Central Government did not meet the needs of a disaster recovery situation. This relationship was critical to our success, but it took time for them to become confident that we could manage the magnitude of the task ahead. A stronger pre-existing support network might have allowed us to move forward more quickly, but we eventually signed a Crown Funding Agreement (CFA) in September 2014. The CFA confirmed financial support for three major capital works projects from sixproposed, and put in place a set of monitoring, reporting and decision-making protocols.
Among these was a Governance Oversight Group which sat between the University Council and the Tertiary Education Commission to monitor compliance with the CFA. Five members were appointed by Government, four were from the University Council, and the Group reported to the Minister of Education. It quickly became an important communication channel to Central Government, providing support at project pinch points. For example, ongoing Government funding tranches were released at milestone delivery, but the reality of complex building work in a post-disaster environment is that milestones sometimes change. The Oversight Group provided a direct route to explain these changes to Government, helping us reach mutually acceptable solutions in a timely fashion to keep the projects moving.
We also found that Government expectations around the tender and engagement process did not always match the reality of the stretched local market. Again, the Oversight Group was a conduit between the needs of project delivery and the expectations of governmental process, facilitating workable options for this exceptional situation.
Under the CFA, the first funding tranche was paid in advance. Having this cash on hand put us in a strong position to negotiate with insurers. It meant we could take the necessary time to reach a comprehensive settlement rather than being pushed to accept quickly in order to fund recovery works.
The campus information tent set up shortly after the February 22 earthquake
What lessons did we learn about the relationship with Central Government in a disaster recovery situation? First, be prepared. If you have a strong relationship under normal operating conditions, you will be well placed to move forward when extreme events occur. And second, don’t be afraid of direct Government involvement in your project. For us, this brought a closer alliance and pragmatic project solutions. It also strengthened our negotiating position in the wider recovery environment and helped us tighten our reporting and decision-making processes.
Business cases were prepared for each of the UC Futures projects, using the Better Business Case model adopted by the NZ Government. They were a prerequisite for Government funding, and this had the potential to drive a focus on up-front costs. But business cases can’t be just about getting the build budget approved. They need to be a reliable foundation for project delivery, and that requires an accurate reflection of scope.
In fact, some of the benefits proposed by our business cases can accrue only after the buildings have been occupied. For example, increased student numbers and new working styles are projected from the provision of contemporary, purpose-built facilities. Strategies for achieving these benefits and monitoring progress towards them need to be resourced beyond the construction phase. The cost of maintaining the asset over its lifetime also needs to be taken into account. The best business cases keep one eye on the capital project and the other on supporting long-term organisational success.
And, of course, an approved business case does not guarantee a successful outcome. Our projects had multi-year lifecycles in a turbulent post-disaster market, so business cases needed to be reviewed and challenged regularly in order to remain relevant. However, we learnt that significant change in a large building programme can be difficult and costly to achieve once the project is moving forward. Some adjustment will be possible, but it is important to develop a robust business case at the outset.
Kirkwood Avenue Hall of Residence, 2017
The business case process is challenging but it is a useful opportunity to ask uncomfortable questions, especially about risk – commercial, economic and strategic. It can enhance your understanding of stakeholders, and it is a good way to communicate with Government. It also provides a risk-based overview for project and programme governance.
It took us a while to get good at business cases, and we had to do a lot of learning quickly in the midst of intense recovery work. If business cases are new to you, our advice would be to introduce this thinking into your planning practices now. It’s a useful discipline at any time, and the transition will be much easier should you need to ramp up business case development in response to a disaster situation.
