Forward icon

Property Matters newsletter | March 2020

In this edition of the Government Property Group newsletter – catch up on the seismic rating of Government Office Accommodation; get an overview of Government Office Branding; keep up to date with the work on the Government Office Accommodation Programme; and find out more about the Government Property Portal updates.

Seismic rating of Government Office Accommodation update

View of tall buildings from the ground up

In October last year we asked agencies to provide details on the seismic rating of their office accommodation, and public facing sites from existing assessments. This information has now been collated and covers all buildings within the office accommodation portfolio.

Read the seismic rating of Government Office Accommodation update.

Government Office Branding

Workplace branding is the overall look and feel of the office environment. It’s an extension of the brand and logo of a single agency and it reflects its vision and values. Having said this, modern government services are increasingly joining up and co-locating to foster collaboration between agencies and align to simplify services to New Zealanders.

We are currently working on guidelines that establish the requirements for government office space in single tenancy, co-tenancy and co-location buildings. The guidelines will suggest ways to adopt neutral branding and promote the New Zealand Government brand while still preserving an agency’s identity. These draft guidelines will go out for consultation in March and we’d like your feedback.

Across government property project updates

Coastal cityscape lit up at night

Wellington Regional Accommodation Project

On behalf of interested agencies, we approached the market to look for commercial office space opportunities in the Kapiti Coast, Porirua and the Hutt Valley. We sought sites with large floor plates and a total area upwards of 2,000m2 available for tenant occupation by January 2025. We received good feedback from the market and also confirmed interest from agencies to form working groups to progress this initiative. We have developed an indicative business case to capture the requirements and propose options and recommendations for the project. We have met with both agencies and short-listed respondents to confirm the next stage of this project.

Wellington Central Accommodation Project

We have been working with a limited number of agencies to develop an approach to market for office accommodation. An Invitation to Participate was released in late January setting out the requirements of potential tenants for 6,000m2 to 12,000m2 for single agencies, and 18,000m2 for agencies co-locating. The indicative timeframe for this project is between mid-2022 to late 2023. Following the evaluation and establishment of a short-list of opportunities, we will work with agencies and respondents to progress this initiative.

Auckland Accommodation Programme – Manukau

Auckland’s urban regeneration agency, Panuku Development Auckland, have been working with Transform Manukau on the rejuvenation of Manukau and the potential development of a new Crown office campus. A key component of this initiative is consideration of the purchase and development of both privately owned and Council-owned sites in the town centre. We have commenced engaging with the market to identify developments that could meet the requirements of agencies in the CBD of Manukau. Once these have been evaluated and a short-list of opportunities identified, we will work with agencies and respondents to confirm the next stage of this project.

Government Property Portal (GPP) updates

Government Property Portal tile

Improvements are on the way!

Based on your feedback, we’ve been refining the GPP so that it offers a simplified and improved user experience. Here are some of the changes under development:

  • new Lease console functionality to manage and access information in one place
  • overall change to the look and feel of the platform for a more intuitive navigation experience
  • new landing (home) page and dashboards that display trends and changes to your portfolio, as well as shortcuts to commonly used functions, and
  • streamlining of the available reports

This will make it easier to enter data and access and display information.

We’re expecting to launch the GPP upgrades and enhancements by mid-2020.

We’re also working to migrate to Microsoft Azure, a cloud based service, as part of the enhancements. Testing for this is well underway, ahead of the upgrades and implementation for the latest version of GPP. In readiness for this, we are cleaning the background data, including:

  • building address (incl. city and region)
  • landlord and company names, and
  • updated location co-ordinates (latitude and longitude)

We will notify you at the time of these changes.

A user group, made up of 12 agency and four GPG representatives has helped develop the roadmap to guide these enhancements. The recent focus has been on Lease and we will begin to look at other modules over time. If you’d like to join the user group or be part of user testing of these enhancements, please get in touch with us.

Agency engagement and training sessions

We continue to run sessions with a number of agencies to ensure the property information held within the government property management system, GPP, is aligned and consistent with the requirements of the lease management standards and guidelines.

Do you have any new starters in your team or would you like a refresh on the GPP?

Don’t forget to register for a drop in session. These sessions are designed for GPP users who would like to build their capability within the system and for those who require assistance with updating their data.

Register for a GPP drop-in session

Property definitions

We have added a list of key property definitions to our website that supports the property guidelines, standards and reports. You can find the property definitions here:

Property definitions