We have been working in the construction contract space since 2017, when we began working with Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities (at that stage Housing New Zealand).  Kāinga Ora is the New Zealand Government Agency responsible for public housing and delivering the Government’s priorities for housing and urban development in New Zealand.

Our work with Kāinga Ora, and the results they have obtained, is set out more fully in this case study, and we jointly won the 2019 IACCM Asia Pacific Award for Operational Improvement. In 2018, our early work together won the Lexis Nexis/Janders Dean Legal Innovation Index Award, and Kāinga Ora's legal team was a finalist for the ILANZ In-house Innovation Award. 

While our work with Kāinga Ora is ongoing, our initial work involved the delivery, within a few weeks, of:

• five versions of the NZS:3910 construction contract (design and build, civil works measure and value, civil works lump sum, construct only, and construct only - remedial works)
• a long-form consultancy agreement, based on CCCS
• a short-form consultancy agreement, designed with the legal team for more straightforward situations

These are still in pilot pending industry feedback, but if there is demand, we could offer solutions based on:

• use of the base templates, with automation, to streamline the production of documents in their standard form
• use of customised versions of the base templates, similar to Kāinga Ora’s approach, enabling consistent and fast production of customised versions with many options.

• Substantial productivity gains. Kāinga Ora were able to produce over twice the number of contracts (compared to before the original pilot) with the same number of staff
• Faster turnaround times (average turnaround time to Kāinga Ora reduced from 6.5 days to 2.8 days (across the full contract suite)
• 75%+ reduction in the time taken to prepare contracts
• ⚬   time taken to prepare 3910 construction contracts reduced from around 4 hours to 1 hour
• ⚬   time taken to prepare short-form consultancy agreements reduced from approximately 50 minutes to 15 minutes
• ⚬   time taken to prepare long-form consultancy agreements reduced from 2 hours to 40 minutes
• Much faster overall transaction times.  What currently takes weeks to draft, negotiate, finalise and sign contracts could be reduced to days or less. 
• Reduced external spend
• Reduced staffing costs. For Kāinga Ora, initially projected staffing requirements decreased from 8 contract facilitators to 4
• Improved quality of contracts prepared, with fewer mistakes being made and less need for checking. Kāinga Ora staff learned more about the contracts using the automation tool
• Easier template management as multiple templates can be combined into one, with the versions controlled by one or two questions in the interview questionnaire
• Greater staff satisfaction, reduced stress, and better relationships with customers.

• The cumulative impact of the organisational level benefits
• The ability to maintain consistency in the use of the industry-standard documents across the sector. For example:
• ⚬   Common concepts and risk allocation can be dealt with in the same way, in the same locations, reducing the “needle in a haystack” searches needed to search an entire contract to identify risky provisions
• ⚬   Enforcing compliance with agreed best practices, such as the Construction Sector Accord, by building key concepts and principles into the solution
• ⚬   Raising the level of capability across the sector by incorporating guidance as to legal requirements and best practices into the automation tool