Infrastructure Systems : Advanced Engineering & Emerging Technology Issues Addressing Sustainable Development, Environment Education, and Risk Management of New Zealand Land and Marine Resources.

To access the Construction Industry Key Performance
Indicators Survey click here

For information on the CAE Programme "Best Practice in the Procurement and Delivery of Construction Services" see here.

The creation of a National Centre of Excellence in Natural Hazards Management

Formation of a subscriber network for advancing Best Practice in Construction Procurement

Establishment of the ‘Rethinking Construction in New Zealand’ project which is engaging in wide consultation with the construction industry to examine how New Zealand firms procure and deliver infrastructure projects. The wide held view of the major players is that there is significant scope for improvement within the sector and that the benefits of improved performance will flow to all in the supply chain. The propose of the project is thus to quantify the scope for improvement, establish performance measures that might be adopted by New Zealand firms, and identify strategies for innovation in the procurement and delivery process. In the long-term the project aims to establish a viable industry program for promoting cultural change and facilitating improvements in efficiency and business performance.
Organised a Natural Hazard Management Forum in 2001 which aimed to identify key areas for collaborative action and the formation of an industry group tasked with preparing a paper on the viability of a national centre for excellence. Now advancing other hazard management initiatives.
Initiated the Lifelines project, bringing together local government, engineering expertise, infrastructure groups and utilities to upgrade our communities’ disaster readiness. This project, begun in 1989, was CAE’s first project and was concerned with the impact of earthquakes on ‘lifelines’, ie. the practical infrastructure that binds society and includes the basic utilities (roads, power, water, gas, sewerage systems, communications, etc) needed for a modern community to function. Among other things, this project sought to identify practical engineering strategies for reducing the risk or impact of earthquake damage to lifelines and thereby enable communities to recover as soon as possible following such an event. Although this project focused on Wellington, some 17 towns and cities around New Zealand have since used the methodology developed during the CAE project to undertake similar projects of their own.
CAE is now taking lifelines a stage further, having introduced the topic, Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) to New Zealand. CIS takes a systems-oriented approach to infrastructure and considers not only vulnerability to all natural hazards but also aspects relating to systems inter-dependence and long-term maintenance and planning.