Engineering New Zealand has highlighted several issues of ‘urgency’ that it sees is critical to the future of engineering in New Zealand. Here is the organisation’s latest release…
New Zealand is facing pressing infrastructure challenges, a long-term shortage of skilled engineers, and low productivity. Improvements to the accessibility and quality of our standards is a key part to addressing this.
We often forget how integral standards are to our life – they apply from making a product, managing different processes, delivering services or supplying materials. They apply to the buildings we live in, the energy we consume, children’s toys, even to your toothbrush.
Better standardisation can help address low productivity and support the construction of the infrastructure New Zealand needs most.
The Government has said it is going to review standards funding and development, this is positive, but there is a need for urgency.
Limited investment a risk to safety
New Zealand is suffering from a lack of investment in and inefficiencies within the standards system. This has the potential to create risk to public safety and impact on the quality of our infrastructure if not addressed soon.
The standards system in New Zealand is administered by Standards NZ, which operates on a user-pays operating model with no direct public funding. An unsustainable funding model means Standards NZ has limited ability to approach the standards system in a proactive and strategic way. This has resulted in outdated (or non-existent) standards, misalignment of standards with Australia, and an underutilisation of international standards, creating significant risk for design and manufacturing.
If the status quo continues there is a risk that New Zealand won’t keep up with best practice, making things uncompetitive, inefficient, or even unsafe.
Volunteers struggling to support standards
Standards development relies heavily on volunteers. Industry experts generously give their time and knowledge to help develop high quality standards across numerous industries. We have heard that this process is often hamstrung by lengthy, uncertain processes and a lack of a prioritised work programme that addresses key issues and gaps.
While standards development is slow globally, in New Zealand there are additional delays due to the reliance on volunteers who must work around their own jobs and commitments.
Unlike some other standards systems, volunteers are not compensated for the expenses they incur, like travel, accommodation and time away from employment. The time and costs for volunteers are becoming prohibitive and resulting in reduced industry participation.
Small businesses impacted by user pays
Although efforts to increase access to free building related standards has been welcomed by the engineering profession, there is still a range of standards that engineers need to be able to do their work that are not free. Accessing the full catalogue of standards can cost up to $21,000 per year.
This is a significant cost, which is not sustainable, particularly for small to medium sized firms who are already navigating very tough economic conditions. This means firms may need to choose whether to only purchase a small number of the standards they use most, or not to purchase them at all. Some may opt to use outdated versions of standards to reduce costs or use variations of international standards.
Disconnect between standards and regulations
Regulatory stewardship in the standards system is a critical problem. To ensure public safety the government has an obligation to make New Zealand’s standards system effective and funded appropriately.
While some standards cited in regulations are available free, there can often be a disconnect between standards and regulations. Regulators can struggle to keep track of the different standards that are introduced or updated, resulting in outdated references to standards in legislation. This can cause confusion and leave professionals uncertain which version of a standard they should be using. The Ministry of Building Innovation and Employment (MBIE) estimated approximately 440 citations needed to be updated in the energy sector alone.
Not only is the user-pays model prohibitive to industry, it also reduces the ability for Standards NZ to be proactive and strategic. Updating standards is expensive and can be ad-hoc. There are a number of standards in the building and construction sector that haven’t been updated since the 1990’s, when best practice is to update standards every 5-7 years.
A sustainable funding system would enable Standards NZ to develop a clear strategy. Better strategic planning would provide businesses and government with direction on priority areas of review or development and allow better management of gaps and issue areas.
Adoption of standards can stimulate economy
High quality standards systems with future focussed strategies can contribute to economic growth. In Germany, improved uptake of standards has helped support the rapid adoption of innovations and contributes approximately €16.77 billion per year to their economy (or 0.72% of GDP).
Similarly in Canada, the standardisation system played a significant role in pandemic recovery and improved their international standing. It is estimated that standardisation contributes to 17% of Canada’s GDP growth.
In Australia, standards have been shown to exhibit a positive relationship with GDP. A 1% increase in the production of standards is associated with a 0.17% increase in GDP or approximately $2.78 billion in 2009.
Adoption of international standards can also support enhanced trade as there is a clear and accepted understanding of the expected quality between exporters and importers. This will be important to enable the Government’s Going for Growth agenda.
International standards for future generations
Better adoption of international standards would help reduce the costs of standard development. Other countries can invest more money into standards development and have better access to specialists due to economies of scale. New Zealand can leverage this, saving money and reducing our reliance on volunteers.
According to Ipsos’ 2024 global infrastructure index, New Zealand rates the sixth lowest country in public satisfaction of infrastructure. In the same study, New Zealand’s housing supply was rated as the poorest quality infrastructure in New Zealand.[1] The World Bank rates the quality of New Zealand’s infrastructure lower than other high-income countries.
Adoption and use of more international standards can help New Zealand adopt approaches that better address global challenges like climate change, ensuring New Zealand’s infrastructure is safe and high performing for our future generations.
Better government decision making
When many people think of the benefits of standards, they think of consumer safety and confidence, which is true. However, standards also benefit business profitability, reduce government costs and contribute to the wider economy.
Standards can help support effective regulation and construction of government funded products. If regulators know standards use best practice methods- they can rely on them to help ensure quality products and provide a technical basis for policy development. Standards can also support more efficient consenting processes.
How do we improve things?
It is promising that the Government has commenced a review into standards funding and development but change needs to be prioritised.
We are calling for sustainable funding of the standards system that recognises the importance of public safety, and the economic and social benefits for New Zealand Inc. The building levy could be better utilised to do this. The building levy is intended to be used to improve the performance of the building sector which improving the standards system would do.
Additionally, New Zealand needs a standards strategy and clear plan of prioritised work to address the key issues and gaps within the standards system.
A clear strategy and sustainable funding model for the standards system will help give industry confidence and clarity to deliver the infrastructure New Zealand needs most. It will also support experts to continue to volunteer their time to develop high quality standards across all aspects of the engineering profession.