New maintenance contracts opportunity to deliver better community outcomes

With 4 (soon to be 5) libraries, 31 public toilets, 67 playgrounds, 305 local parks, and 400 rubbish bins, the Howick Local Board has a lot to maintain. With nearly half our budget allocated to maintenance, you’d expect your local board to have good oversight and control over the $14M spend but unfortunately this hasn’t been the case. But there’s hope!

In 2017, Auckland Council consolidated the maintenance of parks and community facilities under a set of outcome-based contracts for 10 years. By outsourcing the work to four large contractors over five areas (instead of the 38 smaller contracts), council leveraged its scale to deliver cost savings of around $30M. It also simplified operations for council and shifted some risks to the suppliers.

But ambiguous contracts, inadequate asset information, and leaving scheduling to contractors has limited council’s oversight and added risk. From a local board perspective, getting visibility on where our $14M is spent has been difficult and adjusting it to meet local needs has been even harder.

These contracts expire in June 2027, and the good news is that council has listened to our concerns - they are considering how to ensure the new contracts work for everyone. On Thursday 29 January we had a workshop on the upcoming maintenance contracts, and I’m pleased to report it was positive.

In summary, council is getting ready to open the tendering process for the new contracts to cover services like mowing, gardening, playground and building maintenance, plus cleaning for most toilets and community buildings. Other services (arboricultural maintenance) are delivered through technical contracts by specialist suppliers and will be dealt with in 2028. Staff have recommended against insourcing as it’s considered to be cost prohibitive because of the size and scale of resource required, and setup costs. Six geographic areas will provide a balance between elected members feedback, operational efficiency, reduce travel time and carbon emissions. Howick Local Board is grouped with neighboring Ōtara-Papatoetoe, Māngere-Ōtāhuhu, and Manurewa.

One notable change will be a shift away from pure outcome-based contracts. These are great for services where we know the outcome want but the work required may vary. For example keeping the grass mowed in our parks and reserves. During some months grass grows much quicker and needs mowing more often; but in other months it grows slower and needs less maintenance. Instead of paying for them to be mowed on a fixed frequency (which might be too often or not often enough), we pay contractors to keep the grass at a certain height – it’s up to them how they manage the frequency to deliver this outcome.

But this doesn’t make sense for fixed assets like buildings where maintenance is more regular and predictable. The proposal is to move fixed assets like buildings into schedule-based contracts, while leaving open spaces in the outcome-based contracts. This might be under the same supplier, or different suppliers, depending on how the tendering process goes. This should lead to some cost savings and better outcomes for the council, community, and contractors.

As part of the new contracts, council will also be looking for better communication, transparency, and value for money. They’ll also be ensuring the suppliers have capability through New Zealand-based experience which was an issue in 2017 where two suppliers underestimated the operational complexities of Auckland’s environment leading to terrible service during transition.

In my opinion the best change will be the introduction of local priority documents. While council will continue to leverage the scale of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to achieve cost savings, the contracts will also allow variations at a local level. This will provide some flexibility for local boards so we can scale up the service level at premier locations (like Lloyd Elsmore, Barry Curtis, and Macleans) and respond to seasonal demand like we see at Eastern Beach. Transparency will provide local boards with clarity and control that we need to make informed decisions and meet our specific community needs.

We’ve asked for greater local procurement, either directly as local suppliers or as sub-contractors. We also want stronger community partnerships - we’re fortunate to have some fantastic community groups in our area but they sometimes run into barriers like health and safety requirements, or issues where contractors have mowed or sprayed their plants. To address this, a new framework for the suppliers to support community groups to deliver specific projects will be added to the contract, requiring them to mentor and support groups with health and safety, materials supply, rubbish removal etc. We’ve had some success with this but having it formalised in the contracts will allow us to scale it up.

While the length of the contract will be determined during the tendering process, it’s likely they will be for 10-15 years. This allows the supplier to spread the equipment costs over a longer period which is more cost effective. But we’ll be able to adjust our local priority document each year which, together with an annual performance review, will allow local boards to accommodate new/changed assets and shift priorities in response to resident feedback.

There is still a long way to go and it’s all subject to a complex tendering process – the total cost of the current contracts is about $165M so it’s not a small piece of work. The final decisions will be made by the Governing Body (Mayor and Councillors) in December 2026 to allow for the transition before June 2027.

Later in the year the Howick Local Board will be having further workshops and formal meetings to discuss and agree our feedback, while council works through the tendering process.

You can see all the documents that received at our workshop here: https://aucklandcouncil.resolve.red/portal/Meeting/11549/70908?type=1&docId=20800