Rohe arotahinga 1: Whakatere i te kounga whanaketanga ki te taumata e whakapiki ake ai i ngā kōwhiringa whare
Focus area 1: Accelerate quality development at scale that improves housing choices
Auckland needs to find better ways to build more houses faster to keep up with growing demand. This includes the ability to accelerate the delivery of quality large-scale developments.
Our development and construction sectors must raise their productivityA measure of how well an organisation uses its resources (inputs, such as labour and capital) to produce goods and services (outputs) and is typically expressed as a ratio of outputs to inputs. As such, productivity is a measure of efficiency. and use new, innovative and sustainable building methods and materials to ensure that quality housing is built and delivered at greater speed.
We need the right systems and support in place for this to happen.
One of Auckland's growing number of apartment blocks.
Delivering housing is a complex process. The multiple players in the system need to work together to ensure new housing meets demand and is affordable.
Some fundamental requirements for long-term success include:
making the right decisions about development location and development sequencing
lowering house build and operating costs
improving access to finance
raising the capacity and capability of the building industry to deliver an appropriate range of housing types
well designed, quality new developments and housing
coordinating investment in infrastructureThe structures, systems and facilities that support daily life such as water supply, roads and communications, including social infrastructure..
How this can be done
New Zealand's building industry is small-scale and fragmented, and there is a shortage of qualified builders. Local capacity and expertise needs to be strengthened. We also need to attract big development companies from overseas who have expertise in delivering large-scale projects and who will help build local expertise over the medium term.
Auckland needs to learn from and replicate the best overseas construction techniques and be able to use alternative and newly launched products with ease. The aim is to bring the cost of construction down, while also ensuring high-quality, sustainable buildings.
For instance, the level of prefabricationHousing that has components made and/or assembled in one location before being transported to a final building site. in our construction industry is largely restricted to components, such as panels and trusses, as opposed to at-scale and wholesale prefabrication occurring in factories with dwellings being 'assembled' on-site. (Visit OffsiteNZ to read more about these construction methods.)
Legislative changes aim to improve the regulatory system to drive greater uptake of new and innovative building components manufactured offsite.
This also requires our building industry to be adaptable, well-coordinated and equipped with sufficient expertise to be able to move away from bespoke houses built largely on-site.
We need to accelerate large-scale quality developments.
This can be done by:
making it easier to source affordable building materials without compromising quality
deploying innovative designs at scale
helping the industry readily adopt modular building techniques or other faster ways of construction
amalgamating land parcels to allow for at-scale development
encouraging large-scale overseas development companies to enter the Auckland market.
