Strategic Objective To promote and facilitate the formation of an industry group for delivering improved business performance within the NZ construction industry.
To bring about process improvements in the delivery and procurement of construction services within the New Zealand construction and facilities management sector.
Programme Overview
The construction industry is an industry grouping that provides, maintains and manages the fixed infrastructure for people to live and work. This includes housing, commercial and educational buildings; road, rail and marine transportation systems; power generation and supply systems; and water supply and disposal systems. For the year ending March 2003, the construction industry accounted for $13.2 billion of New Zealand’s Gross Fixed Capital Formation and 4.2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Many economists believe that the official measure of the value of construction is underestimated and should be around 14% of GDP Poor performance in construction was highlighted at a CAE conference, “The Contract in Successful Project Management”, held in February 2002. The alliance and partnering approach to procurement contracts is widely acknowledged globally to remedy most of the construction industry’s traditional problems, such as spiralling costs, time overruns, client dissatisfaction, and low profit margins, whilst building an environment where innovation and open communication is encouraged. These concepts are only now being widely adopted in New Zealand and this programme will identify benefits of these new concepts, quantify the scope for improvement, establish performance measures which might be adopted, and identify what the whole industry can work together on. Macroeconomic theory suggests that efficiency gains in production efficiency will lead to increased economic growth and lower overall consumer prices, and this has been studied and validated by works from the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ). In order to achieve this goal, there is a need to gain the buy-in and backing of a broad range of industry stakeholders such as the Government, construction clients, construction companies, and subcontractors. To drive new methods of procurement, CAE has currently taken on board several demonstration projects around New Zealand. These demonstration projects have adopted these best practice approach to project procurement and delivery, and a research study is underway to establish benefits to all stakeholders involved. The outcome of this study will be to establish qualitative and quantitative benefits of best practice procurement methods, which will encourage a wider participation from the industry. In the future, CAE plans to expand the number of participating demonstration projects, improve funding and recognition, and launch a high profile industry campaign focused on facilitating improvements in the efficiency and business performance of the construction industry. | 
