The chair of the New Zealand Utilities Advisory Group, Jim Donovan, announced today that NZUAG has been commissioned to carry out a fast-paced review of options to improve the planning, delivery, and management of works in our transport corridors.
New Zealand’s infrastructure networks—road, rail, electricity, gas, telecommunications, water—share our transport corridors. Activities by one network often impact others, leading to traffic disruption, unplanned outages, repeated excavations, damage, and delays. These issues increase costs, inefficiencies, accident rates, and climate emissions, with significant direct and indirect economic and social impacts.
Key questions to be addressed by the review include:
● What are the key issues and root causes leading to poor compliance and records, and what are the scale and cost of these issues, if known?
● What improvements are needed for planning and management processes?
● What institutional arrangements are needed to support effective corridor management?
○ What incentives, sanctions, or monitoring approaches could be used to improve participation, use, compliance, and monitoring?
○ How can sector-led initiatives be enabled or scaled, and do they need policy and regulatory support?
○ What is the optimal role, if any, of local and/or central government?
The review should be complete in early 2026.
Click here for the full announcement