Planning for a resilient land transport system is an important part of keeping people and communities connected.
For example, the resilience of the network can be considered in the following types of work:
Resilience, and specifically understanding and managing the risks which underpin resilience, is a critical factor that influences the work that we undertake within the transport system. It is important that we consider these risks whenever we invest to plan, manage, and improve the network.
The work undertaken for the long-term maintenance and operations of our existing assets has a significant impact on resilience.
The identification, monitoring and management of risk is a fundamental component of day-to-day asset management across all road controlling authorities. The early identification and management, or escalation of required controls can help reduce potential failures and optimise investment where available.
Work plans and routine decision making (particularly level of service trade-offs) within the maintenance programme can all have impacts. Operational decisions which trade-off drainage clearing, culvert inspections, tree inspections and many other incremental decisions can all impact long term resilience.
Bottom-up risk management is a critical input to signal where management level controls are unable to sufficiently mitigate risk and where capital investment may be required.
We use the Business Case Approach (BCA) to guide our planning, investment and project development processes for projects over $2 million. This section provides project managers and suppliers with tools and tips in a business case context to help develop interventions and agreed responses to improve the resilience of networks.
Determining your pathway through the business case phases
The earlier in the planning process that resilience is considered, the most impactful and cost effective the resilience interventions will be. The programme and indicative business case phases of the BCA are critical for identifying resilience problems and considering interventions. When incorporating a resilience lens into either stage, we recommend using the following resilience guidance.
One of the most proactive ways to improve resilience is to include it within the core set of problems within a business case. This allows the cause and effect to be identified, and the benefits of fixing resilience issues to be described.
The cause and effect on state highways should rely on the evidence shown in the National Resilience Assessment Tool (NRAT). For any road controlling authority, resilience issues should present a case based on evidence of risk (geotechnical reports for example), disruption to users (closures, damage, delays), or potential consequences of failure for significant assets or critical routes (length of time or cost to reinstate for example).
We encourage using the disruption scoring methodology to demonstrate the problem, and the performance measurement framework to measure the benefits.
Benefits management guidance - performance measurement
The links below give examples and insights when applying a resilience lens on the planning and activity development process.
(external link)Strategic case resilience best practice and insights [PDF, 434 KB]
Strategic context for resilience
Much like road safety, resilience issues are cross-cutting and fundamentally a risk to the effective and efficient operation of the transport system. Under best case scenarios, risk-targeted asset management planning and a long-term strategy to achieve the best whole of life cost are the basis of any intervention strategy.
However, under a contestable funding environment, such as the GPS, it can be prudent to target resilience improvements where funding priority and targeted impacts align rather than the level of risk alone.
For example, during the 21-24 GPS, where there was a significant focus on safety and less so on resilience, resilience risks could still be improved whilst justifying the investment on the case for safety. For example, rock fall risk, and ice/snow risk are both being reduced as part of the Homer Tunnel safety improvements project.
Alternatively, under a priority freight efficiency and freight productivity environment, such as the proposed 24-27 GPS, resilience interventions targeting key movements of freight around freight hubs, ports, airports or rail connections and other high freight movement areas could be justified despite the underlying cause being a resilience risk. For example, the current resilience project on SH1 south of Picton, which impacts the reliable travel to the critical interisland ferry services, and the SH1 Brynderwyns project which connects NorthPort with Auckland.
On lower volume roads, resilience risks can be harder to treat alongside other outcomes. But access, severance, urban growth, housing, and lifeline protection can all be used to justify critical risks which are impacting on the operation of the network. This is presented for investment by creating a primary outcome and benefits story that targets the consequence of resilience, rather than the cause of risk. It is important to still acknowledge the risk and highlight resilience as a secondary outcome.
Sometimes we know that risks are present, but they aren’t significant enough to justify investment alone, or other issues have more urgency or priority. Asset management plans and business cases should still include resilience issues to inform investment decision making.
Some of the biggest resilience outcome achievements can be made by ensuring that all planning and activity development work we undertake includes and considers resilience risks. Risks may be shown in a constraints or context map to inform option selection, included in risk registers for potential impacts to project delivery, and considered during design to ensure design life and future fit-for-purpose operations.
Many risks can be appropriately controlled or managed in the short term through small changes in operations and maintenance plans. For example, long term control may be achieved for a surface flooding risk by increasing the frequency of drain clearing. A rock fall risk may be managed in the short term through frequent clearing or temporary barriers but would require a more significant intervention long term.
Resilience risks can also be presented for investment in terms of their consequence – by positioning investments to show how they achieve other high priority outcomes.
