The Construction Sector Accord (Accord) has recently published the Construction Sector Transformation Plan 2022-2025 (Plan).
The Plan outlines the challenges facing the sector and sets out the Accord’s framework for change.
Systemic challenges
The Accord identifies many systemic challenges, including the fragmentation and minimal collaboration across the sector, aging workforce and scarcity of skilled labour, poor health and safety performance (including mental health), low profitability and high-risk practices, cyclical boom-bust performance, poor procurement and risk management practices, low productivity, high environmental impact, and supply chain disruption.
The Accord’s framework
The Plan sets out the Accord’s framework as to how it will address these challenges to achieve its vision of a “thriving, fair and sustainable construction sector for a better Aotearoa New Zealand”.
The framework outlines the Accord’s mid-term goals, priorities, focus areas, enablers, and how the Plan will be delivered, and its progress measured.
The Accord’s mid-term goals
The Accord’s mid-term goals are:
- Increased capabilities of leaders to drive change.
- A more skilled and diverse workforce that is future ready.
- More thriving people and organisations.
- Greater Māori construction economy success.
- Reduced waste and embodied and operational carbon.
- Increased productivity through innovation, technology, and an enabling regulatory environment.
Priorities, focus areas and enablers
The Plan outlines the Accord’s 11 priorities that support its mid-term goals.
The Accord aims to focus on the priorities that sit within the four transformational focus areas namely, ‘People’, Client Leadership’, ‘Environment’, and ‘Innovation’, while reserving some capacity to attend to its fifth focus area “Emerging Issues and Opportunities’.
The Plan identifies ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Networks’ as the two enablers that will support the Accord to achieve its priorities. The Plan also sets outs a range of initiatives that the Accord will deliver to support each priority.
One of the Accord’s priorities is the “Wellbeing, health and safety for all people”. This priority sits within the “People” focus area and aims to achieve a zero-harm and fatality-free sector. The two initiatives the Accord intends to implement to support this priority is the ‘Thriving Infrastructure Pilot Projects’ and the ‘Construction Health, Safety and Wellbeing Strategy’.
Measurement and partnerships
The Accord will review a range of measures (such as sector injuries, Māori business numbers and sizes, and waste production), based on its mid-term goals, to understand the Plan’s progress. This measurement approach aims to give greater confidence and evidence-based direction to the Accord’s activities.
The Accord will also work closely with industry partners and government agencies to deliver the Plan and its initiatives. These initiatives intend to be implemented over the next year and beyond.
This article was co-authored by Rebecca Neil, a Solicitor in our Construction and Infrastructure team.
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