Page 6 - HW February 2020

editorial
Is the channel ch-ch-changing?
EUR190659 Summit-HardwareNews_Cover_A4_FA.indd 1 17/1/20 11:02 am
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2456 • 30/9/2018 www.abc.org.nz
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Rewinding for a moment, just before Christmas I was delighted to spend the best part of an hour with Mitre 10 NZ’s CEO, Chris Wilesmith.
Having heard much about Chris, both from inside and outside the organisation, I was eager to find out what makes him tick.
In the end, the conversation ranged from personal influences in business to hints at possible new directions for the co-op.
Make no mistake, Chris is a disruptor and an agent for change – but it’ll be evolution rather than revolution. After all, the current business isn’t broken.
Chris is also about people – drawing on lessons learned early in his 30+ year retail career, he’s about enabling his team and his members and their teams.
Staying with people, it’s ironic that, having just sung the praises of Anna Butler, MBIE’s General Manager, Building System Performance, who’s been communicating the numerous forthcoming changes to NZ building law and regulations (see my last Editorial!), as I write MBIE will be looking for her replacement.
Anna’s personal change of direction (see page 8) comes at a time when we’re staring down the barrel of some of the biggest changes in the last several decades
as to how the building industry goes about its work.
On top of which, as we were going to press, the Government dropped on us
the outline of its three-year Construction Sector Transformation Plan, just in advance of revealing the date for the next general Election, followed soon after by news of a welcome boost in infrastructure spending.
Unsurprisingly for this Government, it’s an extremely ambitious and broad ranging plan, some of which we’ve already seen put in train (eg procurement), containing no less than 22 programmes within six work streams (sounds a bit like a choice of night classes, doesn’t it?):
1. Leadership: The Construction Sector
Accord Steering Group leads the way until mid-year this year after which time ongoing leadership will be worked out.
2. Business performance: How to overcome “poor understanding of good business practice in enterprises large and small, and limited sharing of lessons learned”?
3. People development: The ultimate goal being to create “a long-term vocational and professional workforce plan”.
4. Health, safety & wellbeing: Address apparent industry complacency about safety, mental health programmes.
5. Regulatory environment: A new, quicker and more accurate consenting system, implement changes to building regulations.
6. Procurement & risk: Building procurement skills, promoting clearer contracts, and “a better deal for subcontractors”.
Did I say “ambitious”?
Steve Bohling, editor steveb@mpm.nz
4 NZHJ | FEBRUARY 2020
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