Community

Working with the community

The NZTA and its construction partners are committed to delivering the Waterview Connection project with the utmost respect for present, past and future generations of the surrounding communities. Within our overall approach to ensuring community satisfaction, we’d just like to highlight four ways in which we will be underlining this commitment.

Direct access to dedicated community liaison staff through freephone hotline

The project’s Communications Manager is Gez Johns. As a local resident himself, Gez has both a professional and personal interest in ensuring the project’s construction impacts on the surrounding communities are effectively managed.

Gez was previously the Communications Manager at the NZTA’s Newmarket Connection: Viaduct Replacement project, and will be joined by a team of highly skilled, experienced and personable community liaison staff.

Once construction is underway, Gez or members of his team will be available 24/7 through a freephone hotline, which will be advertised throughout the surrounding area. In the meantime, he can be reached via gez.johns@nzta.govt.nz.

Information boards and mobile visitor centre

Once the construction phase of the project is underway, we will ensure that information boards are set-up around the surrounding areas to provide general advice and updates on project progress. We will also be delivering newsletters around the community. As one of our project goals is to minimise our environmental footprint however, we will be endeavouring to limit the amount of printed material without compromising availability of information.

We will also be creating a mobile visitor centre that can be relocated throughout the surrounding community and the wider Auckland area. We feel that a mobile unit, as opposed to one building. Will encourage more visits and better community interaction.

This website

All information and updates relating to the project will be available here on this website, which will be revamped over the coming months. The website will also link into social media channels including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to ensure information is widely available and shareable. Online content will be developed to include:

• Project overview
• Video, photos, animations and time-lapse footage
• Live news feed including travel advice
• Learning zone for school children
• Weekly update

Community Liaison groups

Representatives of local residential, educational, iwi, heritage, environmental, housing and business communities will be invited to join members of the construction team and Auckland Council to form two liaison groups in both the Owairaka and Waterview areas.

These Community Liaison groups, which we envisage will meet bi-monthly through the life of the project, will have two key roles;

• To ensure that community interests are not only protected through the construction process, but are appropriately recognised through the urban design and landscaping packages that are so integral to the overall project scope.
• To assist in facilitating a two-way flow of information between the project and all sectors of the surrounding communities, so that construction impacts and community safety can be better managed.

These localised meetings will be supplemented by a larger, twice-yearly meeting, which will bring together representatives of both groups for a wider discussion on progress.

These groups are being established to provide the community with a voice to ensure key issues identified through the consenting process are given due and ongoing consideration. We will therefore initially be inviting expressions of interest from representatives of groups identified through the consenting process and through our own ongoing consultation.

We do expect these groups to evolve over the life of the project, and invite all community members to submit their own expressions of interest for involvement, or raise topics for discussion at these meetings.

Community Liaison group notes

• 14 November 2011 (PDF, 82KB)
  • Abridged presentation (PDF, 1.00MB)
• Notes of Owairaka/New Windsor CLG meeting - 13 December 2011 (PDF, 1.30MB)
• Notes of Waterview CLG meeting - 14 December 2011 (PDF, 452KB)

Community information days

The Well-Connected Alliance held information days for the Waterview and Owairaka / New Windsor communities on December 13 and 14. Please click below to view some of the posters that were on display.

• Waterview Connection route (PDF, 4.08MB)
• Enabling works (PDF, 1.45MB)
• Ecology focus - lizard relocation (PDF, 4.90MB)