On September 4, 2010, the Canterbury region of New Zealand was struck by a devastating 7.1-magnitude earthquake. In the months that followed, numerous small aftershocks occurred. On February 22, 2011, the most significant aftershock hit the city of Christchurch in the form of a 6.3-magnitude earthquake.

Catastrophic damage flattened much of the city’s urban infrastructure. Cracked roads, collapsed buildings and broken sewer and water pipes were just the beginning. Liquefication and flooding was extensive. The city was without power, shutting down businesses and schools; the Christchurch airport was severely impacted.

To manage the long and complicated road to recovery, the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (“SCIRT”) was assembled with a goal of mobilizing the best project resources from New Zealand and the world to rebuild the critically damaged infrastructure, an estimated NZ$2.6b project, and bring the city fully back to life.

The project was made up of two alliances: a design alliance of six partners and a construction alliance of five partners—delivering this highly complex project with a progressive contracting model. It was scoped to run for five years through to completion.

Duncan Gibb, the original Project General Manager, was committed to inculcating a mindset of breakthrough leadership approaches in service of this highly important societal mission. He opted to use a progressive contracting model to create a truly collaborative Integrated Product Team (IPT) across these two alliances and 11 contractor partners. Drawing on their deep knowledge and experience creating high-performance teams, Mr. Gibb brought in JMW to support the IPT in committing to and delivering the type of breakthrough results that would fulfill SCIRT’s mission.

JMW’s work consisted of:
It was agreed that building the kind of leading IT organization envisaged, and convincingly demonstrating value for money, would require the following:

  • A regular schedule of leadership workshops with the two alliance teams—both separately and as one IPT—to train them in the leadership toolkit for elite collaboration and have them align on breakthrough objectives for the project;
  • Strategic consulting to deliver high performance on key strategic initiatives that helped advance those breakthrough objectives; and
  • Coaching for key project leaders to support their leadership of these breakthrough efforts in the face of ongoing challenges and roadblocks.

In the early stages of the IPT, JMW consulted Mr. Gibb on bringing together the assorted design and construction companies into the two alliances. This required addressing diverse—and at times—competitive interests. JMW instilled their collaborative project principles within the two alliances, resulting in alignment across all 11 contractor partners on a higher purpose for SCIRT—“building a better, stronger Christchurch”—with a culture focused on breakthrough commitments and performance. This higher purpose and culture carried the day for the first few years of the project.

A few years into the project, it came to light the government was facing financial pressures and the IPT would need to cut their budget by more than 10%. JMW provided coaching and facilitation to the IPT leadership to embrace this challenge as part of their innovative culture, rather than to simply lose heart. The team set a breakthrough goal of delivering the project at a budget beyond the 10% cut—and they succeeded by “thinking creatively outside the box,” reconsidering their approach to the project’s requirements and their delivery methodology.

More than 2,000 people from over 100 organizations joined forces under the SCIRT umbrella at the post-earthquake peak of the rebuild. Hundreds of people came and went, bringing innovation and tenacity to an enormous task. Observers attributed much of SCIRT’s success to the culture that created a unique environment and experience for team members, which, in turn, resulted in outstanding outcomes for the people of Christchurch.*

From a project impact perspective, the original government-sponsored budget and delivery schedule for the SCIRT project was set at NZ$2.6bn over five years. Through JMW’s dedicated leadership work with the IPT, the project not only delivered on schedule, but also at NZ$2.3bn for a savings of NZ$300m (13% under budget).

From a community impact perspective, the SCIRT’s leadership reported they were able to accomplish an incredible amount for the Christchurch community thanks to the collaborative work across the IPT—with that collaboration fully attributed to the alliance high-performance consulting and coaching provided by JMW.

*Source: SCIRT (scirtlearninglegacy.org.nz)