Haratua | May 2024
Kia ora koutou, and welcome to our May panui | eNews for 2024
This month’s eNews features:
- Q&A with Future Development Strategy Project Lead Parvati Rotherham
- Engagement Report Released for Industrial Land Study
- The Golden ‘Why’ in Transport Trends – WTAU Update No. 3
- Regional Economic Development Plan – Activities & Events
WRLC and Industry Webinars
- Recording – How workplace culture drives success, Colin Ellis – 8 May
- Resourcing urban growth – aggregate opportunity areas, Infrastructure Commission
Industry Updates
- How is our infrastructure tracking? Monitoring progress on New Zealand’s first Infrastructure Strategy – Te Waihanga
- WRLC work mentioned in InfraRead Issue 08
- Wellington’s Urban Density Balancing Act – Mirjam Schindler & Eva Neely
Meet our people
Q&A with Parvati Rotherham – Future Development Strategy Project Lead
In this interview, Project Lead for the Future Development Strategy Parvati Rotherham answers questions on what it takes to co-ordinate a pan-regional strategy. Parvati shares her key learnings, her hopes for the future of our region, and her great advice and tips to anyone else embarking on similar work!
WRLC Industrial Land Study Report Released
The Wairarapa-Wellington-Horowhenua regions needs to accommodate more industrial land over the next 30 years.
The region’s 2023 Housing and Business Assessment calculated that the region will be short almost 700 hectares of industrial land over the next 30 years. This is a crude measure based on projected population growth, so exactly how much land do we need, what type and where? These are the questions the Industrial Land Study aims to answer. This study has reached its first major milestone – releasing its Stakeholder Engagement Report (The report). This report presents findings from a series of workshops with industrial business and landowners and an online survey.
The ‘Why’ in Transport Trends
WTAU Update No. 3
In this article, the Transport Analytics Unit share how they extract meaning from transport data to inform better decisions, and what current data says about how we get around…
Regional Economic Development Plan – Activities & Events
Above: Climate Tech Summit Aotearoa
WellingtonNZ and initiative leads are continuing to progress implementation of the initiatives in the Regional Economic Development Plan (REDP) on behalf of the WRLC.
Recent highlights include:
- The biggest event in the technology leadership training series to date was held on 22 May. Growth Jam attracted over 250 attendees to learn what today’s leading experts think about partnerships, AI, social media, sales and more.
- House of Science is a charitable trust dedicated to improving STEM learning in the classroom for thousands of primary aged students through providing science resource kits in English and Te Reo. This initiative is a long-term investment in building our region’s future STEM workforce, and support is required to ensure these kits can reach schools across our region. Please consider donating to their current Givealittle campaign to sustain the programme in the Hutt Valley, or contact WellingtonNZ if you’re an individual or organisation interested in exploring sponsorship for a resource kit or branch within our region.
- Summer of Engineering delivered by the team at Summer of Tech, has keen, capable tertiary students and graduates, motivated to kick-start their careers with paid summer internships. Join the online info session, 12pm-1pm on Wednesday 5 June to find out how current students and new graduates can benefit your business, plus an overview of how Callaghan Innovation grant funding can support 2024 summer internship wages. Find out about the engineering expertise available and register here.
- Climate Tech Summit Aotearoa – will be held at St James Theatre, 2pm Thursday 20 June. This premier event showcases the brightest minds and most groundbreaking climate technologies emerging from New Zealand, aimed at tackling climate change. There will be a showcase of startups from Creative HQs latest Climate Response Accelerator. Find out more and secure tickets online here.
Above: Growth Jam Crew
Webinar: securing resources for urban growth – aggregate opportunity areas
Date & Time June 5, 2024, 12:30pm
Webinar details
Growing cities and regions must plan for not only where they’ll grow, but where they’ll source the materials needed for this growth.
Roading and construction use around four million truckloads of sand, rock and gravel aggregates annually. While, these are best quarried close to where they’re used, quarries and gravel pits aren’t acceptable activities in built up areas. So as cities grow, these vital resource sites get pushed further out, increasing their price, the wear on roading, and carbon emissions.
To aid councils and others in thinking about where the resources will come from to support future growth, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission Te Waihanga, commissioned GNS Science to identify potential extraction opportunities close to four high-growth areas: Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Queenstown/Central Otago. These new aggregate opportunity maps will support growth in these areas.
Speakers
Ross Copland – Chief Executive, Te Waihanga
Matt Hill – Geologist, GNS Science
Mike Chilton – Consulting Quarry Engineer, Aggretech
Kim Kelly – Programme Director, Wellington Regional Leadership Committee
WRLC Webinar Recordings
Building a Healthy Team Culture
Colin D. Ellis – global expert in workplace culture
“Strategy is why we do what we do, culture is how we do what we do.” ~ Colin Ellis
Our recent thought leadership webinar featured global workplace culture expert and author Colin D Ellis. Colin broke down the six pillars of a vibrant culture and how they contribute to team success. From collaboration and setting expectations to navigating diverse personalities and communication styles, these insights help us to understand how and why to create a team culture that works.
Colin D Ellis is an award-winning international speaker, four-time best-selling author and renowned workplace culture and project management expert who works with organisations around the world to help them transform the way they get things done.
Research on workplace success highlights the importance of culture (the values, behaviours and principles of how we work together). Gallup International has also identified a ‘vibrant’ culture as pivotal to performance.
View more about Colin Ellis here: Workplace Culture Expert
How is our infrastructure tracking? InfraCom Insights
Te Waihanga New Zealand Infrastructure Commission has recently released a monitoring report, assessing progress against New Zealand’s first Infrastructure Strategy. The New Zealand Infrastructure Strategy, Rautaki Hanganga o Aotearoa, was published in May 2022 and sets a pathway to transform New Zealand’s infrastructure over the next 30 years.
WRLC in industry news
WRLC has garnered not one but two mentions in the latest issue of Infrastructure NZ’s publication, InfraRead, just in time for your long weekend reading!
Beca’s Patrick McVeigh has written an insightful piece on spatial planning and economic development, underlining need to think differently about sustainable economic and productivity growth. He argues that we need, not only to do more with less, but to seriously rethink our approach to economic development to align this with spatial planning and infrastructure delivery.
David Jones from TSA Riley, who worked on Manchester’s City Deal, shares perspectives from key players in Manchester, and explores the lessons that Wellington and New Zealand might take from it. These include having the right skills and governance in place, ensuring good cooperation between regional leaders, empowering the city centre and providing good public transport connections.
Wellington’s urban density balancing act
How can Wellington ensure parent-centred urban planning as it follows the trend of increasing housing densification seen in other cities?
In this recent newsroom think-piece, Victoria University researchers Mirjam Schindler – lecturer in human geography, and Eva Neely – senior lecturer in health promotion, share recent research findings looking at the impact of urban planning on new parenthood, and thus the health and wellbeing of our future residents.
WRLC Publications
Keep in touch
One of our guiding proverbs at WRLC is, ‘He waka eke noa‘ – we’re all in this together. If there is anything you’d like to share or know more about, please do not hesitate to contact us at: hello@wrlc.org.nz
About the Wellington Regional Leadership Committee
The Wellington Regional Leadership Committee is a union of councils, iwi and central government in the Wairarapa-Wellington-Horowhenua region, formed to work collaboratively on our shared, cross-boundary challenges, in order to positively shape the future of this region.
WRLC exists to enable better ways of working together to cultivate a region where people want to live, work and thrive.
Our projects cover the five broad key areas of iwi capacity, housing, climate, transport and economic development. Find out more on our project page. You can get in touch at hello@wrlc.org.nz.
