As the recovery from this year’s wild weather wears on, infrastructure experts say almost 15,000 extra construction workers could be needed at the peak of the effort to get the job done.
Projections from the Infrastructure Commission Te Waihanga paint a picture to 2029 of the scale of the recovery from cyclones Gabrielle and Hale, and the Auckland Anniversary floods.
At its peak — the last quarter of 2025 — 14,859 extra workers could be needed for the roading, rail, water and energy projects on the go.
Te Waihanga general manager of strategy Geoff Cooper said now that the figures were laid bare in an online tool, decision-makers in the sector could assess workforce capacity against the work that lay ahead.
“Asset owners and infrastructure providers are going to look at this and go: ‘Is this project deliverable?’”
Cooper said the numbers were not estimates, but projections — which would change as the information was digested and factored into planning.
It would help industry players see the whole puzzle rather than just their piece, and could force the sector to change the way it phased the rebuild.
“We’re expecting the sector to look at it and course-correct if they need to.
“This really is about us understanding the process for prioritisation. What projects are essential [to] get across the line early because they’re critical infrastructure works or lifelines; connections that we absolutely have to have to enable economic activity and social connections to occur.
“So there’s a reprioritisation here that has to happen.”
The projections would evolve as plans were laid and projects got under way.
But it was not just the actual work that the sector — and the Government — needed to consider.
Paturoa Rd in Auckland's Titirangi was badly damaged by floods during Auckland Anniversary Weekend in January. Photo / Brett Phibbs
“These ancillary services that you need to wrap around the rebuild, things like housing, are going to be quite material and instrumental to how fast you can go,” Cooper said.
Civil Contractors New Zealand chief executive Alan Pollard said the industry was working on a big overseas recruitment drive, and some people such as forestry workers had picked up construction jobs.
But he still worried there would not be enough hands on deck.
“There’s a lot of stress in the industry at the moment, because people are working extremely hard under extremely trying conditions to try and meet the requirements of the current workload, and we’ve got to up that for when the future workload comes on stream.”
“If you look at the immigration pathway, very few of the visa settings have civil construction roles on them.
“We were fortunate to have a couple of roles added pre-Christmas to the green list, but some of particularly the lower-skilled visa categories — there are no civil workers on there at all, and that has to change.”
State Highway 5 between Glengarry and Te Pōhue, in Hawke's Bay, was badly damaged during Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Waka Kotahi
On the other side of planning, prioritisation and building were people — waiting to move on with their lives.
The rural Hawke’s Bay community of Puketapu is split in two after the Tūtaekurī River bridge was swept away during Cyclone Gabrielle.
Puketapu pub owner Mary Danielson said it was taking its toll, with locals suffering from the loss of connection.
“It affects us terribly, the whole community, we used to be called Puketapu, and now we’re Puketapu North and Puketapu South.”
It was toughest for those south of the river, she said.
“They can’t get over here as easy, it takes a long time for children to come to school. It’s not helped depression, it’s very, very bad not having that bridge there.”
They will be without it for at least another year.
But Danielson worried that would drag on, with so much other work to do to rebuild Hawke’s Bay.
After all, it was just one bridge, in one small community, in one of many regions hammered by storms this year.
