How we developed the Plan

The final Plan was rewritten to make it more accessible. Instances of duplication in the draft were removed and sections were shortened where possible. Some content was also shifted to the website, including an explainer on how the National Infrastructure Plan relates to the 2022 National Infrastructure Strategy. 

The document went through a full design process to make it attractive and easy to read, including the creation of distinct visual identities for the recommendations and priorities for the decade ahead to make them stand out. 

The final Plan includes new and updated technical information. For example, our Forward Guidance forecasts showing sustainable investment levels for different infrastructure sectors changed to reflect new information from Stats NZ. The final Plan also included our first attempt to regionalise these forecasts by showing demand variations across different networks. We commissioned modelling to show changing flood risk, and updated the final Plan to include the September quarter figures for the National Infrastructure Pipeline and further lessons and endorsements from the second round of the Infrastructure Priorities Programme.

The Plan also incorporates outcomes from new technical work, including research on the relationship between infrastructure and economic growth and analysis of demand for major network capacity upgrades at a regional or project level.

We also included prominent maps showing a spatial representation of projects in our National Infrastructure Pipeline.

In the draft, Sector summaries were included in the body of the Plan. We shifted them into an appendix in the final document as they contain no specific recommendations. The final Plan expands the number of sectors from seven to 17, reflecting calls from interested stakeholders during the consultation process.

In contrast to the draft, each of the recommendations in the final Plan include a detailed implementation path, nominated lead agencies, and an indicative timeframe for actioning the proposed changes. The numbering is also different, reflecting the decision to order the document by theme. There were 19 recommendations in the draft Plan. The following four weren’t included in the final Plan, although their intent is still captured by the narrative and two sets of best practice principles:   

Recommendation 3: Sustainable investment. This was removed because it was a recommendation to the Commission to regularly update our Forward Guidance and other work streams, which can be actioned internally.    

Recommendation 4: Consumer protection. While there was strong support for this recommendation during the feedback period, we chose to present it as a universal set of best practice principles in the final Plan as the draft recommendation wasn’t sufficiently targeted or monitorable.   

Recommendation 6: Funding pathways. This was also presented as best practice principles on how to fund and price different types of infrastructure, for example, network infrastructure should be funded from user charges. The same reason applies as for Recommendation 4.  

Recommendation 15: Project transparency. There were strong levels of support for transparency measures in consultation on the draft Plan. The final Plan refers to the need for business cases and other project information to be made public, but the specific recommendation was removed because the theme of transparency cuts across multiple recommendations; it is also included in the best practice principles on aligning infrastructure providers with consumer interests.  

The final Plan includes one new recommendation: ‘Predictable Government funding signals’. This complements the ‘Multi-year budgeting’ recommendation in the section on long-term asset management and investment planning and takes the total number of recommendations in the Plan to 16 – three fewer than in the draft. 

In finalising the Plan, we clarified the wording of the recommendations to make them as clear and direct as possible. There were also some shifts in emphasis for several recommendations: 

Recommendation 17: Learning from projects in the draft became Recommendation 10: Project information coordination in the final Plan, which was reframed around the need to have standardised, accessible project information, including post-completion details, in the National Infrastructure Pipeline.  

Recommendation 10: Policy stability in the draft became Recommendation 14: Accelerated electricity investment. While the substance of this recommendation was focused on the energy sector in both the draft and the final Plan, we included more analysis to the topic in the final Plan, reflecting the importance of having accessible, affordable electricity to the wider economy. We also retitled it to clarify the purpose of the recommendation.