Development Response Toolkit

Knowing a community and how they will be impacted is crucial to designing sympathetic construction methods and effective mitigations.

Project leads are responsible for ensuring impacts are understood, clearly communicated and updated regularly.

Contractors will draw upon impact assessments to help develop their Construction Disruption Mitigation Management Plans.

Developing a Community Impact Assessment

• Guideline for assessing community impacts 
  Practical prompts for understanding the neighbourhood and identifying community impacts.
   

Completed Community Impact Assessments

• Midtown Programme Community Impact Assessment - Te Ha Noa.
  A comprehensive assessment of the community impacts of multiple projects in midtown.
• Tyler Street Community Impact Assessment 
  A profile and report on the Waitematā Station plaza and Tyler Street upgrade project.

Careful planning ensures construction is staged, scheduled, and integrated with minimal disruption. A good understanding of community impacts feeds into program coordination.

Project leads should be aware of other works, private and public, that may interact with their project.

• Contractor Requirements for Disruption Mitigation
  This document details roles and responsibilities for construction management and outlines considerations for the disruption mitigation plan.
• Construction Disruption Mitigation Management Plan
  A CDMMP guides project operations and is developed at the procurement stage.

Contractors must focus on keeping construction areas safe, clean, and accessible, addressing issues like vandalism, graffiti, wayfinding, and compliance.

Standards and guidelines give contractors clarity when establishing and altering their work site and provide the tools to monitor areas themselves.

Regular checks by Council and external specialists help maintain the best experience possible.

• Best Practice Guidelines for Universal Access
  How to ensure everyone has equal opportunity and ability to navigate around sites.
• CPTED guidelines for Development Response
  A guide with examples about how to prevent crime around sites through good design.

Wayfinding and signage

• Wayfinding guidelines - Quick start
  A succinct guide to wayfinding and signage design.
• Wayfinding guidelines - In depth
• Maynard Wayfinding - Design templates and assets.
  Design elements, fonts, files and resources for creating wayfinding signage.

From traffic management to waste handling, the city must keep running smoothly around construction sites. 

Adhere to to the standards set out in the Contractor Requirements for Disruption Mitigation, and follow the methodologies in the Construction Disruption Mitigation Management Plan.

Update the CDMMP when noteable changes or new information about impacts is known that requires changes in approaches.

Clear communication and active engagement keep people informed, involved, and confident in the project’s goals. It must be consistent, easy to understand, and tailored to the audience.

Communication and engagement can take various forms and throughout a project, and undertaken by communication and engagement specialists, development response advisors, contractor stakeholder managers, project leads and more.

• Midtown Programme Communications and Engagement approach.
• Impacted audience communications.
  Midtown neighbourhood webpage
• Sign up to receive the City Centre progress newsletter.

No matter where you're working, all businesses will want you to get the basics right, communicate well, help them continue to operate effectively, and make sure their customers can get to them easily. In some cases, you might need to go the extra mile to help businesses to continue to thrive while you deliver your project:

• A background to the Midtown Business Support Program and its Development Response foundations
  Midtown Business Support Development Response approach
• Details about the 2024 Business Support program
  Small Business Support Programme Guide
• Information about the programme offering tailored support and services to help small businesses grow resilience and adapt to Midtown development
  Midtown Small Business Support webpage

Activation and placemaking are valuable tools to improve customer experience of the places you’re working on. Opportunities to use activation and placemaking can arise at any stage of the project e.g.:

• Early engagement and design phases - to support community engagement, help demonstrate possible futures, and to build awareness and enthusiasm for your project
• Pre-construction - to trial or help people get used to changes in the place through approaches like tactical urbanism
• During construction - to help spaces feel safe, welcoming and inviting despite disruption, and to help attract customers to affected areas and businesses
• Post-construction - to attract people back to the space, raise the profile of your project and help it reach its potential

Specialist activation and placemaking advisors can help you design initiatives that align with your project and support neighbouring communities.

• City Centre Place Activation and Placemaking - Annual report 2023/2024.
  This captures full range of activation and placemaking activities in the city centre.