Workstream 8: Beacons

Sharing good practice and lessons learned are an essential part of a healthy, competitive industry. The Beacons workstream identifies and promotes case studies to share with the sector, showing innovative approaches and exemplars of the Accord values.

See the Beacons case studies

Beacons Awards

The inaugural awards took place at the 2021 Building Nations conference in November, with the Beacon of the Year Award being presented by Hon Poto Williams.

The winner was New Plymouth District Council for its 'supply chain leadership' approach, focusing on developing long-term supplier partnerships, prioritising the safety and financial health of its contractors.

In presenting the award, Minister Williams said the judges "recognised the courage and leadership required to move away from the Lowest Price Conforming tender approach, and to develop long term partnerships in an attempt to deliver better infrastructure for New Plymouth, while also delivering positive health and safety and training outcomes for their supply chain partners. The judges noted how transformative this approach would be if it were adopted widely across the industry. They were also blown away by your bravery and leadership."

"You have thrown down the gauntlet to other clients across the industry to focus on value rather than cost," she said.

The finalists were:

• KiwiRail for its use of Building Information Modelling (BIM)
• Canam Commercial and Whangarei District Council for their innovative procurement on the Whangārei Civic Centre project, which targeted community objectives.

Case studies

Seven case studies were published during 2021 and featured at the awards ceremony, covering topics including improving health and safety culture and practice on site, integrating digital technologies into construction projects, procuring for community outcomes and to support local businesses, and improving environmental outcomes by dramatically reducing waste to landfill.

The focus is on learning and all case studies include a 'how to' guide, demonstrating how the lessons can be applied.

Short videos illustrating the case studies have been viewed as many as 3,000 times each on the Accord website and LinkedIn channels.

Web pages about Beacons, the eight existing case studies and their 'how to' guides have been viewed just over 8,600 times.

Sixteen case study applications were received during 2021, of which seven were published. There are 27 new applications being considered for 2022.

The future focus of the workstream will include:

• Gaining better understanding of how the sector engages with and learns from Beacons to ensure effectiveness
• Working with membership organisations to offer training on Beacons case studies to embed learning in the sector
• Exploring how lessons can be extracted from case studies on an ongoing basis
• Partnering with other workstreams to take deep dives into projects that have experienced failure, in order to share the rich learnings that can come from these experiences.