Projects – Infrastructure Projects

This project involved obtaining designations for a new Transpower switching station and transmission line spur to connect a new gas fired power station in Taranaki to the National Grid. Incite led the designation process and prepared the necessary notices of requirement which were processed on a limited notified basis and confirmed in 2017 without the need for a hearing following the resolution of matters raised in the only submission.

Incite acts in a project management role for RCG to manage the environmental approvals across numerous sites and ensures that the relevant approvals are in place to enable construction within the allocated timeframes. Incite provides site selection advice during the initial design phase to overcome the site specific challenges that some locations can pose for new utility services, including those located in places identified for their natural and amenity values, and recognises that there are specific operational and technical requirements for infrastructure which make site identification challenging.

Incite lead a team of planners, landscape architects and arborists in the resource consent programme for Chorus’s Ultra Fast Fibre (UFB) aerial deployment in Auckland, Wellington and Gisborne.   This involved working with Chorus deployment specialists to devise an aerial deployment architecture overlaid on existing overhead copper and electricity networks that was feasible and visually appropriate, and obtaining area based global consents based on the deployment architecture.  The resource consents were obtained on a non-notified basis and enabled Chorus to meet their UFB obligations with the NZ Government in these cities.  The deployment rules adopted for the consent programme have now largely been adopted as permitted activity rules in the Resource Management (National Environmental Standards for Telecommunication Facilities) Regulations 2016.

One of many submarine cable projects Incite has been involved in is the Tasman Global Access cable between Raglan NZ and Sydney Australia jointly funded by Spark New Zealand Trading Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Limited and Telstra Australia.  Incite was responsible for environmental consenting within New Zealand jurisdiction including terrestrial cable and cable station infrastructure, coastal permits in the Coastal Marine Area, and pre-activity notification of works between the outer extent of the Coastal Marine Area and the edge of the Continental Shelf under regulations to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012.  Consents were granted in 2015 and the cable was put into service in 2017.  The cable provides improved international band width capacity to New Zealand along with strengthened diversity and resilience for New Zealand’s communications infrastructure.

As part of this nationwide Spark project undertaken in 2018 and 2019, Incite planners assisted Spark with their multidisciplinary site selection process, and obtained the necessary RMA resource consents and certificates of compliance for approximately 100 new mobile sites throughout New Zealand.  The project required delivery of consents, property rights and construction within tight timeframes, and planning advice was focussed on avoiding consents were practicable and where consents were required to minimise consenting risk through siting and design.

An example of one of the many school projects Incite has undertaken, this project is an example of the end to end processes of site selection, due diligence and designation in which Incite is often involved.  In this project, Incite led a site selection study for the Ministry of Education involving a multi-disciplinary project team in the fast developing north western part of Huapai, a rural satellite town near Auckland, and recommended a site for acquisition and designation.  Incite then provided the planning input to a due diligence study of the recommended option leading to this site being acquired by the Crown for a school.  Incite led the designation process for this school including consultation and preparation of the notice of requirement, and provided expert planning evidence at the hearing, culminating in a designation being confirmed for the site and a new school being constructed in 2018/2019.

Incite was part of the project team to establish a new primary school in the rapidly growing town of Rolleston.  This included leading the site selection study and identifying a site for acquisition and designation. Due to the extremely tight timeframe for the construction and opening of the school – Lemonwood Grove Primary School – Incite, together with a MOE representative, consulted with all adjoining landowners and stakeholders and obtained written approval from all affected parties. This meant that the designation was able to be processed without notification and the school opened on time in January 2017.