The Challenge
We wanted to be in ahead of the regulators in consent management, not behind them. We wanted to show that Auckland City is committed to improving our management of consent compliance. We’ve been able to tell them: ‘Here are all the consents that we’ve got. These are the ones that we know are fully compliant. These are the ones that need to be looked at and here is our programme of work to address that’. “That puts it in our court in terms of management, as opposed to the regulator’s court. We have the luxury of being able to manage it effectively, with the help of a new tool we have recently started using.”
That puts it in our court in terms of management, as opposed to the regulator’s court. We have the luxury of being able to manage it effectively, with the help of a new tool we have recently started using.
Auckland Council
The Result
Grant quotes a real ‘before and after’ example:
“We got a phone call from a regulator saying they had had a complaint about a particular project. They wanted to check compliance with the consent conditions and gave us a consent number. By accessing CS-VUE it was easily determined that it was the wrong consent number. We gave them the right one and forwarded the compliance information associated with it. That happened
in a matter of minutes instead of what would have been days with a paper-based system.”
“Previously, if we wanted to know whether we were legally compliant on a consent, we literally had to go to the paper records and dig that information out. That digging was a very onerous exercise and not particularly transparent to those involved because they couldn’t see what historical information was on a consent.
With CS-VUE we can now instantly determine the state of compliance, and do things like ensure the draft conditions coming through from the regulator are consistent with previous ones, so there’s no growth in complexity or inappropriate consent conditions.”
“CS-VUE is a part of what is essentially an award-winning programme management system.”
“We’re setting the benchmark for this stuff and this software is very much a part of that benchmark. It adds incredible data management because we were talking about legal activities here – potentially illegal activities if you’re not doing your job right.”
