Christchurch’s Mayor, Lianne Dalziel, is a big fan of engineers. They are the problem solvers, she says.
But this hasn’t always been so. As a law student she and her fellows looked down on engineering students at the University of Canterbury. They were loud, noisy, male and drank beer. Law students were cool, sophisticated, drank red wine and ate camembert.
Now as Mayor, engineers are right up there for Her Worship. “Lawyers create the problems and engineers help me to solve them.”
Newly elected, with a background in law and national politics but without experience in local government, Mayor Dalziel is arguably faced with the biggest challenge in the country, certainly in the history of Christchurch: how to rebuild a shattered city.
Engineers are front and centre for her in answering that challenge. About $40 billion is going to be spent by central and local government, building owners, householders, investors and other parties in rebuilding the city. The City Council is committed to contributing $1.88 billion as part of its agreement with the Government.
Right now the Council is dealing with serious flooding issues in the city and facing a financial crisis with a $534 million-plus deficit in its accounts.
It’s also battling to attract developers to build in the central city.
Businesses that used to be located there have now set up in Addington, along Moorhouse Avenue on the edge of the central business district and in the northwest of the city. Rents are lower and car parking is easier. What will now induce those businesses to move back? In 2012 the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) published its so called Canterbury Recovery Strategy, which Mayor Dalziel sees as short on specifics.
Anyone expecting to find a document that sets out what is going to be built or rebuilt, by whom, by when and using whose money will be disappointed.
“That document doesn’t exist. You might want it to exist but it doesn’t, and that’s one of the things holding
Christchurch back.
“The city is the problem child of the region. Waimakariri and Selwyn are on the outskirts of the city and they are just quietly getting on with rebuilding and recovery.”
There were governance issues about how best to guide the rebuilding of the city and there is also a risk averse culture in local government, she says. Mayor Dalziel admits that attracting and retaining professional talent in Christchurch is not something the City Council has focused on.
The responsibility has sat with central government and the local office of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which has stepped up its staffing and activity considerably.
With the Christchurch Polytechnic the region’s two universities, Canterbury and Lincoln, have co-ordinated their efforts to get students into the city, but “this is more about education and training than holding on to, or attracting, top level professional skills”.
As Mayor, Ms Dalziel is satisfied the technical advice the Council is getting is robust and is making the choices clearer and the decisions easier.
“We have got some extremely strong technical advisors. I am used to a less hierarchical environment. Some of the strictures of the Local Government Act in terms of reporting and exposure to judicial review have developed quite a risk averse environment. There’s less appetite to promote innovative solutions.”
The barriers to the city’s recovery, Mayor Dalziel believes, are structural and not about the range and quality of technical advice.
“When all the agencies come together and work collaboratively on solutions to a problem and no one organisation has to own the solution, we get some great outcomes. I don’t see that happening all the time.”
Attracting and retaining engineering staff is a continuing issue for the Christchurch City Council.
“We have seen shortages in the Council area ourselves. We have scaled up in the building inspector and building consents areas and have recruited staff from as far away as Canada because of the shortfall.”
At a more general level, the Council and other agencies are very dependent on getting good quality technical
advice; advice that scopes problems, defines options and recommends solutions.
“Engineers are absolutely fundamental in terms of finding solutions; is the area safe seismically, can we build here, how can we mitigate the new risks that we now face – like the flood risk? How do we deal with the long-term issues around climate change? Engineers are right at the top of the list. A lot of technical input is required to find solutions.
“For us the technical expertise required is paramount. We cannot cope with another winter like the one we have just had.”
There can be a downside to relying on engineers and other highly qualified professionals. Those who are not professionally qualified in those skill areas or able to handle the material can be disempowered. There can be a “tyranny of the technocrats”.
“It is a challenge,” Mayor Dalziel acknowledges.
“I like the idea of different disciplines sitting down with each other and reviewing the options. Having a range of different disciplines looking at a problem is in my view a very helpful way of identifying the best way forward.”
The ideal is to work collaboratively to find solutions that work across a number of dimensions – environmental, financial, legal “and socially because sometimes engineers overlook that”.
The lack of a single integrated action plan for the city is a real concern.
“It is one of our immediate risks. There is no plan covering Christchurch that draws together the CBD, transport across the city, the various communities we have in Christchurch, and how they connect internally and externally. “The CERA model has never been publically reviewed. The two organisations should always be working hand in hand, and sometimes they are not,” she says.
In her view, the quality of advice from engineers and other professionals is high and there are enough qualified people around.
But as for the organisational arrangements and the nature of the relationships among the various players in the Christchurch recovery scene, there is – in Mayor Dalziel’s judgement – “room for improvement”.