Outcome 2

Infracom has taken the following actions:

• Built internal capability and capacity to deliver a reliable pipeline
• Developed and maintained a pipeline of works published on Infracom’s website
• Continued to grow the base of contributing procuring entities.

Infracom’s Infrastructure Pipeline tool was developed by the ITU within the Treasury and was first published
on 9 May 2019. The tool, which is now hosted on Infracom’s website, addresses the issue of the lack of a visible coordinated pipeline of work in New Zealand. It aims to be a single, trusted source of information for the construction industry, enabling the sector to plan in order to enhance the use of resources and its
capability and capacity.

Improvements have been made to the Infrastructure Pipeline tool since it was established, including the addition of new project statuses to allow earlier visibility of upcoming projects and the addition of more data fields.

The Pipeline includes projects from the Government’s New Zealand Upgrade Programme. It also includes projects from high-growth councils and capital-intensive government agencies. Transport was the largest
sector represented on the Pipeline as at 30 June 2020.

Pipeline context pre-Infracom

Consultation between government and the private sector in the first half of 2019 identified a consistent theme: the need for a long-term forecast of infrastructure spending and projects to help the market focus, plan and resource. This became the Infrastructure Pipeline.

The ITU within the Treasury was established as a precursor to Infracom and, through quarters one and two of 2019/20, built the prototype pipeline with the involvement of the five central government contributing agencies:

• Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
• Ministry of Education
• Ministry of Health
• New Zealand Defence Force
• Department of Corrections.

Pipeline evolution under Infracom

• Infracom was established on 26 September 2019, and the prototype pipeline was transferred to Infracom
  and established on the new website platform. Users can filter by sector, region, organisation, and cost
  range. There is also a downloadable copy of the data available in an open-data format.
• By November 2019 the Pipeline had grown to 506 projects from 15 contributing organisations. The
  organisations were largely those that Infracom had engaged with either through its agency/project support
  and advisory function or through more general engagement and included councils, water services’
  providers and central government agencies.
• In December 2019 efficiencies were established in the pipeline data-acquisition process. These included
  shifting approvals to use the data to each organisation rather than requiring them to get Ministerial approval
  after collecting the data.
• The March 2020 pipeline update added data from the existing 15 organisations augmented by a further four
  contributing agencies, with project numbers increasing to 2,290.
• The data fields that Infracom captures for each project were increased to include information on the funding status and procurement type. The range of projects was expanded to include those in the early planning
  stage. This was in response to feedback requesting earlier visibility of projects for more advanced planning.
• In April 2020 the long-term Pipeline Strategy, in development since January 2020, was signed off by the
  Board. The Strategy involved the inclusion of additional data displayed using interactive dashboards and
  mapping, and an investigation into the creation tools to replace the manual collection of data.

Publications

We published a response to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE’s) National
Construction Pipeline Report (September 2019).

The impacts of COVID-19

The arrival of COVID-19 had significant impacts on forward works plans. As a result, Infracom encouraged all
organisations submitting to the Pipeline to advise it of any changes in project information as soon as they were
confirmed. This enabled Infracom to update the Pipeline as these were received.

In May and June 2020, the Major Projects and Advisory team’s focus shifted to providing advice on
the COVID-19 recovery stimulus and wider recovery efforts, such as the rapid mobilisation work for the
Construction Sector Accord. The opportunity was taken to assess business intelligence tools for use on the
website for alternative displays of data in dashboards and maps, which resulted in refined draft dashboards
and improved data presentation. Infracom shifted from a scheduled Pipeline update model to more reactive,
dynamic updates of project data.

Infrastructure Pipeline Progress

Measuring performance

Infracom forecast a net surplus for 2019/20 anticipating it would not be spending all Revenue from the
Crown in its first 10 months of establishment. The actual net surplus for Outcome 2 was higher than forecast
mainly due to the impact of COVID-19 delaying workstreams. The delayed workstreams will continue to be
progressed in 2020/21.