CREATION OF THE SUSTAINABLE OUTCOMES TOOLKIT
Auckland Council Healthy Waters and Height have been working together to create the Sustainable Outcomes Toolkit - an open-sourced resource for public works projects or contracts of any scale led by any public or private sector organisation in New Zealand. It has been used successfully on multi-million-dollar infrastructure projects.
What we’re tackling:
Social inequality, population growth and environmental degradation present multiple complex challenges for planning and spending decision-makers
There is a significant opportunity for public works contracts to address these sorts of challenges, by drawing additional social value out of their supply chains. This is about making every public dollar spent go much further by targeting social, economic, cultural or environmental improvements. The historical challenge has been that there was no user-friendly way for Councils to embed sustainable solutions and evaluation methods into the project lifecycle. Scale, velocity and limited subject matter resources have often led to sustainable solutions being put into the “too hard basket” – until now.
Our Solution:
The toolkit will aid operational delivery teams to identify, evaluate and support delivery of sustainable outcomes. It provides guidance to support embedding sustainable outcomes into contracts/projects from the initial business planning stage, to requesting market information, to evaluating and through to delivery. Its key beauty is that it is user-friendly for non-experts in social, economic, cultural and environmental issues.
The Sustainable Outcomes Toolkit is a powerful example of collaborative working in that it was created with the input and interests of contractors, subcontractors, Council, mana whenua and other community stakeholders.
The Toolkit has now been offered as a free, open-sourced solution to Councils throughout New Zealand.
PROTECTING MANUKA HONEY AS IT TAKES ON THE WORLD
Origins Software is a fast-growing tech business servicing the primary industries. They have developed a software product, Apitrak, that protects the integrity of New Zealand’s $2 billion a year manuka honey industry by providing full visibility of the honey supply chain. Height has supported Origins Software to refine their market value proposition and pitch for investment funding and new business. This has set the platform for them to win work in the private sector and also preposition for a number of domestic and international government agencies.
“Warner and the team provide that clarity and articulated where we stood in the market. We were able to objectively review our product offering and then pitch and communicate it in a way that allowed us to show real tangible benefits for our customers. The work the team did was also instrumental in us being a finalist in the 2017 Hi Tech Awards.”
Hayden Stowell, CEO, Origins Software
TRIPLING KIWI EXPORTS IN CONSTRUCTION AND ENGINEERING
Height was asked by NZTE to help develop a framework to grow New Zealand exports in the technical and construction sector in Australia and the Pacific. Through workshops with the Australian-based Trade Commissions teams, Height jointly developed a process to vet, support and provide structure to exporters entering the Australian engineering market. Coupled with training and upskilling of the NZTE team, this has seen exports grow from $70M to over $200M in three years.
Through NZTE we have also provided tender, pitch and pricing training to a number of great New Zealand businesses across other sectors, including health, food and beverage, manufacturing, education and professional services.
“Height provides part of our tendering service for NZTE. We have a process where we meet with customers (ie NZ businesses) who have needs in a particular overseas market and we match up those needs to a service provider.
“We selected Height to support our customers because of their experience in the Australian and NZ markets, and in the infrastructure and heavier industries space.
Height help them with benchmarking - understanding what is best practice – or actually working with them live on a tender response and talking them through how to make the most of that particular bid.”
Saya Wahlrich, NZTE
SECURING A MAJOR WORLD BANK CONTRACT IN SAMOA
Airways is New Zealand’s air navigation service provider. In 2016 they secured a contract with the World Development and Asian Development Banks to provide technical services as part of the upgrade of Samoa's main airport in Apia. An efficient, high-performing airport provides a vital function for the small island nation, and the funding agencies were looking to improve aviation safety and security. Airways drew on Height's extensive tendering experience to co-develop the pitch, and Height also supported the upskilling of the Airways pricing and bid team. Then, after completing the initial customer analysis and joint development of the bid, Height also supported development and analyses of pricing and cashflow forecasting. Under the deal, Airways is consulting on the design and procurement of air navigation aids, air traffic control equipment and airfield ground lighting systems.
STRATEGIC STORMWATER PROCUREMENT FOR A FAST GROWING CITY
The demands of an increasing population on the infrastructure of New Zealand’s largest city requires a balance of strategic and risk-based procurement models.
Height has been able to leverage its practical infrastructure and market experience to design pragmatic procurement solutions. We advise the Council in designing large-scale operations and maintenance contracts, construction contract models, and performance-based professional services contracts. This advice ensures ratepayers get the best quality service for these utilities at a reasonable price.
OPTIMISING DEFENCE CAPABILITY
The Seasprite Helicopter is a critical extension of the warfighting capability of the New Zealand’s Navy. The challenge of maintaining and operating this unique and specialist asset, while also balancing commercial realities, is a significant challenge for the New Zealand Defence Force. Height completed a comprehensive lessons learnt review of the fleet from an operational, technical, maintenance, financial and governance perspective. We then made recommendations on the best approach for maintenance, repair and overhaul. We were also able to leverage our wider commercial experience to provide practical recommendations on project controls, governance and risk management.
MAXIMISING SOCIAL BENEFITS OF PROCUREMENT
A challenge facing many Government agencies is how to actively engage small businesses and other less-represented groups/individuals within their supply chain. This is known as social procurement, and it’s a way of generating wider social benefits from Government investments.
Height completed base research for New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) on the initiatives being used by the wider industry to engage with small business, Maori and Pacifica, youth and the long-term unemployed. This piece of work has formed the base for wider discussion on social procurement and industry engagement models. Height has also been appointed to the NZTA panel.