Geoff Cooper: Changing the perceptions of infrastructure planning to dynamic from bureaucratic

Of Interest

New Zealand should be working towards a 100-year planning horizon when it comes to infrastructure, and viewing planning as "an exercise in dynamism and inquisition" rather than a "bureaucratic exercise."

That's the view of Geoff Cooper, General Manager of Strategy at the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission.

Speaking in interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast, Cooper argues planning gets a bad rap.

"It's seen as a bureaucratic exercise and it should be seen as an exercise in dynamism and inquisition. I think we need to see more of this planning expertise coming into government, and planning happening from a much earlier period of time, front footing the needs rather than waiting for them to be in front of us," Cooper says.

"Getting ahead of the planning cycle is a really obvious place to start. And start identifying options before we get into solutions because the moment a project is announced you've created interests. The moment you announce a project all of a sudden there's interested parties. And once there are interested parties, whatever the project is, it's very difficult to do optioneering, almost impossible."

"So what we would say here is think slow, act fast. Go through a slow, rigorous planning process, identify your problem definition first ... then once you've got a preferred solution which you've stress tested, then you get on with it and do it as fast as you can," says Cooper.

In terms of the sort of timeframes we should be thinking about for infrastructure planning in New Zealand, Cooper says there's no firm answer.

"But certainly I would be thinking [a] 100-year [time]frame personally."

In the podcast Cooper also talks about the five key drivers of infrastructure demand, NZ's infrastructure deficit, how our infrastructure needs are changing, project selection and delivery, why big projects always seem to cost more and take longer than expected, funding, financing, contestable infrastructure priorities, plus the resilience and sustainability of infrastructure.

"What we're dealing with here is uncertainty and risk. As we're building our new infrastructure what we're seeing are the risks associated with climate change, and the level of resilience that we need, is far higher than what we thought. In fact a lot of our infrastructure is simply not designed for the level of resilience that we need today. And it's going to take decades to get it there as you've seen with things like the earthquake strengthening. The difficult thing with resilience, of course, is out of sight out of mind. It's very difficult to get the acceptance that we need to invest in something that you may or may not need in the future. So it becomes a very difficult thing to sell," Cooper says.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.