The New Zealand Tourism 2025 Plan (Tourism 2025) sets out the vision for tourism in New Zealand in the future. An outcome of the Plan is to deliver a world-class visitor experience. This will be enhanced by ensuring that appropriate road signs are provided to support the visitor experience at all stages of a journey.

Resolve Group has been working with NZTA and other stakeholders to create the three-part Tourism Sign Strategy, a strategy needed because the Traffic Control Devices Manual (TCD) is progressively replacing the Manual of Traffic Signs and Markings (MOTSAM) and the TCD rule encourages regional tourism strategies by road controlling authorities. This has resulted in a need to provide best practice guidance and instruction to the transport industry and practitioners on implementing an overarching national strategy for providing and installing tourism signs on state highways, including motorways and expressways.

The document produced is a regional Auckland/ Northland tourism strategy document, but it is designed as a template for other road controlling authorities to use. While the Strategy is currently in draft form, it is expected to be implemented soon.

Examples of Existing Tourist Route Logos

Resolve Group’s National Manager for Water, Thomas Haarhoff, attended Water New Zealand’s annual conference in Hamilton from 17-19 September, which looked at implementing reform in the water sector.

Thomas noted two recurring themes at the conference: how asset criticality needs to drive asset management decisions, and the growing importance of measuring inflow and infiltration sewer networks.  It is hoped the techniques related to the analysis of criticality can guide renewal programmes, helping to defer non-critical renewals and thereby mitigating the ‘renewals bow wave.’ The accurate measurement of inflow and infiltration enhances the criticality approach by defining when assets that would be run to failure would become a cost and compliance burden for an asset owner.

The Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) and Christchurch City are taking the criticality approach further, integrating the cost of earthquake recovery into asset design decisions. This provides an interesting tool for decision makers to minimise the cost of future earthquakes. The work could have applications throughout New Zealand and be applied to any natural hazard.