CONSTRUCTION AND THE PROGNOSIS FOR CHRISTCHURCH Personal view from Peter Townsend on the future of construction in Christchurch The construction industry has been through a relatively prolonged period of intense frustration. Frustration with the inability to get on with the rebuild due to ongoing seismic activity and insurance dilemmas, frustration with being unable to apply full current resource capacity to creating a new Christchurch and frustration with a lack of clear direction in terms of the key pieces of infrastructure and key projects and how our new city will fit around them. This is all about to change! There is no doubt that construction activity in our city is going to ramp up in a totally unprecedented fashion. We are already seeing significant activity on the fringes of our four avenues with major construction activity occurring in Moorhouse Avenue, Lincoln Road and Victoria Street especially. They are the lucky areas of town because they get a head start on the rest of the
city which will lock in prosperity in those areas for time to come. However, we are inextricably tracking towards the rebuild of our city and project management companies and construction companies, with foresight, are gearing up accordingly. One of the issues we face in Christchurch is that all businesses, including those directly involved in the rebuild of Christchurch, have tended to adopt a short term approach. Because activity isn’t going as well as it should, we think it isn’t going to happen. Because there have been delays we think they are going to continue. However the smart people who will gain maximum opportunity from involvement in the rebuild are thinking well ahead. They are not thinking about the next weeks or months, they are thinking about where their company will be in a year and that is important. A year down the track, Christchurch will be a completely different place with continuing housing demand, accelerated economic activity and resource constraints running right across the city. Once the rebuild gets underway in earnest we are going to see a completely different environment.
This will involve the need for different business strategies and business disciplines. It will certainly be underpinned by the fundamental need to build scale to cope with the rebuild in our city. In building scale we will look at collaborative models, we will look at bringing outsiders in both in terms of human resource that is required to rebuild our city and the commercial acumen needed to accommodate the scale of the rebuild. I know there is a certain cynicism out there in the community about whether or not this will ever happen. It will certainly happen and for good reason! One of the good reasons is the strategic location of Christchurch as the capital of the South Island, with its excellent port facilities and international airport. Second is its geographical location with the Christchurch hinterland, particularly the Canterbury plains, and the ongoing utilisation and increasing utilisation of water. Third is that much of the damage that has been incurred through the series of earthquakes we have suffered is covered by insurance or by central or local Government funding. This means our economic prosperity is locked in and it is
just a matter of how we best apply that to capital to the city’s rebuild. We also need to ensure that our leadership adopt a “can do” attitude in the city, that we have a well developed strategy and economic prioritisation for those key projects and precincts in the central city, and that we sort out land issues with a little autocracy if necessary. Christchurch is going to be an exciting place to live, but it is going to take time to finish the rebuild. In the interim, we are going to continue to be locked into the biggest economic development program this country has ever seen. Already smart construction companies, both within Christchurch and outside the city, are thinking strategically and preparing themselves to be actively involved in the massive rebuild of our city. Good luck to them and may they deliver us a product that both we and future generations can be proud of and enjoy. Peter Townsend