By Steve Mooney, Country Head, Institute of Public Works Engineering (IPWEA) Aotearoa New Zealand

Building capacity and capability in asset management with elected members.

When people are elected as councillors or mayors of their local government authority or local municipality, they are also elected as stewards and custodians of that community’s infrastructure assets.

Whether they have been elected to serve on a council for a major urban centre with a multimillion-dollar budget, or a small community with a sparse population, the principles are the same: for the period of their tenure, they have a stewardship responsibility for infrastructure assets – from roads and bridges, to sporting fields and water treatment.

This means that they are responsible for ensuring that the assets deliver services to the community at the highest possible standard at the lowest life cycle cost. This responsibility is not just for the period of tenure; elected officials are also responsible for the legacy they will leave for future generations.

This stewardship responsibility can be a steep learning curve for many elected officials. The council’s executive officers will brief them on budget planning, and many will come to a new understanding of the competing priorities and challenges that the organisation is grappling with.

They will gain insight into the decisions that need to be made to ensure that the infrastructure that the community relies upon delivers the right levels of service and is maintained effectively.

They will understand how the council budget balances spending and investment, and how decisions are made to repair and maintain some assets while also allocating to new capital works within budgetary constraints.

For example, decisions on funding a particular infrastructure asset may have implications on service levels and create opportunity costs that mean other projects are unfunded and postponed.

For the first time, many elected officials will be dealing with a detailed and holistic asset management plan that addresses issues of environmental and financial sustainability, generational equity and long-term demographic change.

With these challenges in mind, IPWEA has a training course specifically for elected officials to help them execute their stewardship responsibilities, with the goal of providing a resource that helps them understand their roles in infrastructure and asset management.

Effective stewardship means that elected officials can understand operational issues as well as long-term asset management plans. They need to be able to ask executive officers the right questions in the context of policies and planning.

Even before Owen Jackson was elected as a Councillor at the Timaru District Council in New Zealand’s South Island, he had been involved in developing public infrastructure for his community.

Jackson, whose daytime job is as a breakfast host and program director at Port FM radio in the South Island, was previously involved in developing a new playground at the iconic Caroline Bay, and it was there that he had his first experience in the challenges of asset management.

‘We had a very old playground there, which was not really fit for purpose,’ says Jackson.

‘I came up with the idea of building a totally accessible playground that was fun, and that would also tell our stories locally, but also be more functional than the one we had.’

Jackson was involved in creating a committee and, in partnership with the Timaru District Council, began the project – from the fundraising, to the design and construction.

After raising $3 million from the community, grants and a contribution from the council, Jackson was part of a joint committee that delivered the playground project, which recently won an award for New Zealand’s best playground.

‘I was already passionate about local issues anyway, and in my role with radio, I had a lot of interaction with the community,’ he says. ‘But the experience gave me an understanding of how council works, with tenders and procurement, and the idea of the social infrastructure requirements for the community.’

Since completing the playground project, Jackson has been elected to the Timaru Council and has also completed the IPWEA course Infrastructure Asset Management Planning for Elected Members.

‘I would love to have done that course before I did the project,’ he says. ‘It would have made all the difference, because obviously we were starting with a blank piece of paper.

‘For example, I didn’t know anything about the importance of what was under the ground – all the pipes and the other infrastructure that we had to build on top of to make it a great place and also futureproof it.’

The IPWEA course, says Jackson, helped him understand the role that elected members play as ‘guardians of infrastructure’ for their communities.

‘As an elected member, it’s your job to protect it, look after it, maintain it and make sure it’s meeting the requirements of the community,’ he says.

‘Infrastructure is the crux of your role as an elected member, and if you don’t understand it and respect it, and don’t keep abreast of what’s going on with your infrastructure, then you’re going to struggle and not be as effective an elected member as you could be.’

As an elected member, Jackson is now dealing with the challenge of ‘getting the balance right between providing the infrastructure you need to provide and keeping the rates under control’.

One lesson he received was the example of an old theatre that was more than 140 years old, which had been closed in 2018 due to health and safety issues.

‘The question was; do we simply just do it up and get it open and fit for purpose, or do we take it a step further and look at how we improve the overall infrastructure at the south end of our town, which had been a bit neglected?’

Jackson was a proponent of including a refurbished theatre as part of a new heritage centre, which would also include the local museum.

‘The idea was to incorporate the two together, and that would give us a really good heritage centre, with a traditional Victorian theatre and a new museum,’ he says. ‘So, we purchased the land around it, and demolished buildings and got it all set up, and went through two rounds of public consultation and got some funding to be shovel‑ready with a project that was going to reinvigorate that end of town, which is the oldest part with buildings that are heritage protected.’

The proposal, however, was voted down by the council by a significant majority.

‘What was said was that the public weren’t happy about shelling out $44 million, and felt there should be more prudent ways to get the theatre up and running,’ says Jackson.

While Jackson is still in favour of the larger, more ambitious project, his experience with the playground project and what he has learnt from the IPWEA course have given him a wider perspective, and an ability to contextualise asset management decision-making.

In his feedback on the IPWEA course, Jackson said he believed it should be a ‘mandatory requirement’ for any new councillors coming into elected office.

‘I was impressed by the content and the reminders about my stewardship role to make sure I get the best value possible for our local ratepayers,’ he says.

‘These were invaluable insights, and reminders about the importance of asset management are my biggest takeaways from this course.’