Maintaining the pace of delivery to sustainably transform the sector

For 2020, the Construction Sector Accord has focused on responding to and contributing to the recovery from COVID-19 and setting the foundations for the culture change. The next year will see the Accord continuing to leverage this progress.

Focus areas for the coming year include:

Maintaining and embedding progress

• Developing and using Accord principles,behaviours and resources such as the Rapid Mobilisation Playbook and construction pipeline has been in the front of many government and sector leaders’ minds during the immediate recovery from COVID-19. The response to COVID-19 has driven significant cooperation throughout the year.
• It will be a key priority to maintain this momentum and embed emerging positive behaviours sparked by the Accord. If the Accord does not do this, the restart of post-COVID-19 'business as usual' may cause government and the sector to revert to old behaviours, such as undercutting each other in price and quality.
• This will involve strengthening the partnership between government and industry and continuing to develop respectful, productive relationships through the Accord platform. It will also involve embedding the Accord principles through the forward construction pipeline.

Establishing the Accord network

• When it is established in 2021, the Accord Network will be made up of sector participants, including contractors, professional and legal service providers, clients and educators. Each will have made a commitment to a high standard of behaviour and performance. This will engage the wider industry with the Accord and be key to driving behaviour change in the sector.
• Work in 2021 will focus on building engagement, expectations and commitment. This will set the foundation for developing a performance-based membership model.
• Work will also focus on engaging more government agencies and more small to medium enterprises in the Accord Network.

Developing an approach to environment and sustainability

• The Accord will create a road-map to understand how it can contribute to environmental and sustainability goals across the sector. This will involve collaboration and coordination with the wide range of work, views and opportunities already in this space within the construction sector, including Government's Building for Climate Change programme.

Leading the transformation of vocational education

• In September 2020, the Construction Sector Accord, as part of a consortium of construction sector bodies, was selected to lead the Construction Centre of Vocational Excellence (ConCoVE).
• The ConCoVE will focus on how construction related vocational education can be applied to help fix the industry's long-standing skills challenges. The Accord's involvement will help to drive transformational change in the construction skills space and support development of a skilled, future-focused construction workforce.

Supporting regulatory reform

• The Accord is developing an understanding of behaviours and settings that can create barriers to transformation in the regulatory system. The coming year will provide an opportunity to further contribute the construction sector's unified voice to ambitious cross-government work on regulatory reform, including potential changes to the Building Act 2004 and resource management legislation.
• The Accord is focused on ensuring regulatory reform is implemented in a way that produces tangible results for the sector and for New Zealanders.

Measuring the progress of transformation

• The Accord has established a robust evaluation framework and extensive set of indicators to help measure how work within the Transformation Plan is delivering real change across the sector. This evaluation will help the Accord assess progress and recalibrate initiatives to ensure they are having transformational impact.
• A key input into the evaluation will be an Accord network survey of employers and employees, which will return results in 2021 and be used to track progress on a regular basis.