Change in planning is a certainty. Sometimes it's pushed on teams by regulatory reform. Sometimes it comes from within the team through initiatives to improve the way it works. Either way, processes constantly need to adapt. Change is hard. Change at scale is harder. Teams have many moving parts, from the people designing and overseeing processes, to those executing them. That creates a problem of scale. It's not just about how you adapt individually to a change, it's about how well the team...

The upcoming Resource Management (RM) reforms are front of mind for New Zealand planning teams. This deep dive explores the practical impact of these shifts on the preparation and processing of resource consent applications. Change is Inherently Challenging Historically, major planning framework changes have created challenges for consent processing. As new policies hit the ground, high-level provisions are stress-tested on real-world projects, often needing to be interpreted and turned into...

Introduction Councils and planning consultancies are increasingly exploring the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) into planning...