26 Jun 2025
Engineering New Zealand welcomes the draft National Infrastructure Plan, released by Te Waihanga New Zealand Infrastructure Commission today, and are heartened by the commitment to predictable sustainable infrastructure funding from both the Minister of Infrastructure and the opposition spokesperson.
The National Infrastructure Plan will provide advice to the Government on how to create a long-term view of New Zealand’s infrastructure expectations and priorities. Once the final plan is published, the Government will respond to the recommendations.
“We are encouraged that this plan clearly reflects the challenges facing the construction and infrastructure industry, demonstrating that they have listened. There is acknowledgement of workforce challenges – both due to reactive, short-term infrastructure planning and in the long-term – which reflects the reality of the industry,” says Engineering New Zealand Chief Executive Dr Richard Templer.
“We are optimistic that this plan will improve the quality, functionality and delivery of our infrastructure into the future. However, we also know that New Zealand is facing a long-term skills shortage, so it is crucial that we maintain a focus on retaining and supporting the skills we need to deliver on this plan.”
New Zealand is currently facing a shortfall of about 2,300 new engineers each year and the issue is getting worse. Not enough young people are pursing engineering careers or completing qualifications, and many people are leaving the profession within the first two years of work.
We are even hearing that some students are struggling to secure the prerequisite work experience required for their degrees, while graduates are finding themselves unable to obtain employment in their chosen fields in New Zealand.
In addition to this, the current work situation in New Zealand is compounding this long-term problem with far too many engineers losing their jobs and leaving for opportunities overseas.
This matters – without enough engineers we can’t deliver on the infrastructure set out in this plan that New Zealand so desperately needs. Ensuring a continued focus on skills in parallel to the National Infrastructure Plan will be crucial to delivering on it for New Zealanders. With that being said, Engineering New Zealand is pleased to see some actions engineers have been calling for included in the plan.
“The plan has a strong focus on ensuring a transparent and less turbulent pipeline, prioritising maintenance and renewals first to ensure the infrastructure we do have is functioning as well as it can be. Both of these are actions we have been long advocating for, so it is good to see,” says Templer.
“The focus on building a strong foundation is sensible and we welcome the focus on building government capability to become a more sophisticated client. It is encouraging to see that they have listened to our and other industry feedback on how to improve procurement through continuous improvement, improved data and post-completion reviews. This will help save time and cut costs.”
Engineering New Zealand looks forward to providing feedback on the plan and will help support improvements to ensure the final version does more to address our long-term skills shortage and provides further detail to help resolve the urgent problems the infrastructure industry faces. We know that this change will take time, and we are interested in seeing a roadmap from the Government on how and when we will transition to a new infrastructure approach.
