Auckland’s water and wastewater services provider, Watercare, runs operations intrinsically linked to the environment, so when the company mobilised to deliver via an improved, low-carbon infrastructure, it needed to rethink procurement. The Enterprise Model is Watercare’s new collaborative procurement strategy, enabling it to deliver its bold 40:20:20 vision: reducing carbon in construction by 40%, reducing the cost to deliver by 20%, and improving health, safety and wellbeing by 20%.

Traditionally, Watercare’s approach to infrastructure was to engage contractors by project, on construction-only and occasionally design and build arrangements. This would no longer be sufficient. The $2.4bn infrastructure programme would be achieved through a collaborative 10-year partnership with two construction contractors. As such, Watercare, New Zealand’s second-largest company by asset size, needed to ensure the procurement process was innovative and agile.

The bold procurement strategy relied on a three-stage evaluation process, including interactive workshops. This process took only seven months, from initiating the team to signing the contract on 27 September 2019. Under conventional methods this would have taken 12-18 months, but Watercare’s empowered procurement team ensured the process was achieved with speed, quality and confident management.