In this edition of the Government Property Group newsletter – we discuss the new regional hub, Blue Mountains Campus; Learn more about our new branding guidelines; keep up to date with the new document builder; and find out more about the latest knowledge hour.

We are delighted to announce that the Blue Mountains campus in Upper Hutt is the first lease entered into as part of the Regional Hub initiative. It is designed to bring public services and public servants closer to the communities we serve.

Around 130 MBIE people will have the opportunity to set up in the refurbished Buddle Building in late 2023, alongside Kiwirail and potentially other government agencies.

Regional hubs will support local economies, reduce commuter congestion, carbon emissions, and create a more resilient public sector by strengthening our business continuity.

Read more about this exciting development for the future of Government workplaces.

MBIE and Government Property Group teams collaborate on Blue Mountains Campus lease

It’s here! The much-anticipated new guidelines are live and helping government agencies apply a consistent approach to branding in their workplaces, supporting a more streamlined, joined-up, modern public service, organised around the needs of New Zealanders.

The branding, wayfinding, and signage guidelines help agencies apply this common branding to their office environments, including use of colour and signage.

Agencies should implement these guidelines when relocating into new buildings, or when carrying out refurbishment projects initiated from 1st July 2022. For projects already underway we would encourage you to adopt as much of the guidelines as practicable.

Read more about the new branding, wayfinding and signage guidelines.

We have completed the proof of concept for the Serraview Space Utilisation System and are very excited with the results.

Two agencies successfully used Serraview for space planning across a single location (with multiple floors). Both agencies commented on how easy the tool was to deploy and use. They also appreciated the rich data, insights and future potential that Serraview could offer to their respective businesses.

Given the successful result, we will now look to see how Serraview can fit within the broader Property Portal eco system. We’ll keep you posted.

Our annual customer survey opened on 9 June. You should have received an email invite with the survey link. We would really appreciate you taking the time to complete the survey. It is important to hear how you think we are doing and where we can add value to the government property function.

The survey is open from 9 June to 23 June 2022. It will only take 10-15 minutes to complete and responses are anonymous.

Start survey

If you have any questions, please speak to your property portfolio specialist or email us.

As part of the Carbon Neutral Government Programme, the status of NABERSNZ assessments are regularly reported to Ministers.  NABERSNZ is the energy rating system being used to measure and compare the environmental energy and carbon performance of Government office buildings, owned and leased.  

All agencies with office space (or combined space with another agency) ≥ 2,000 m2 should have a plan for completing their base build assessment by December 2025. For larger buildings ≥ 5,000-m2 a tenancy assessment is also required. Our property portfolio specialists will be reminding agencies of this requirement in Q3 of this calendar year.

We need your help! If you have taken on a new lease, or had a lease renewal since January 2021, you should be well underway in obtaining a NABERSNZ rating, and this will need to be reported in the Government Property Portal.

NABERSNZ assessment form [DOCX, 84 KB] 

Email the completed form to the Government Property Portal team and copy in your property portfolio specialist.

We’ve had an enthusiastic team of property experts and content specialists working hard on revitalising the valuable guidance available on the Governement Property Group website.

The current website has a range of useful, practical advice – so we’re making it easier for website users to find it quickly. Our refresh is now underway and we’re looking forward to bringing you our refreshed content soon.

We’ve also been seeking input from some of our agency contacts to help us determine the ideal website structure. If you’d like to contribute, please email our Senior Content Producer Nicky Ramage.

We are launching an exciting new online document automation tool – Document Builder.

This tool will help you save time and money, minimise risk, and create more consistent documents.

Document Builder allows you and your legal advisors to generate documents using the following automated templates:

• Memorandum of Understanding
• Co-location Agreement
• Agreement to Lease
• Deed of Lease (Complex and Less Complex)
• Development Agreement

If your agency has an upcoming property project and is interested in being an early adopter of the Document Builder, please email our Document Builder team.

Braden Lister and Deborah Bridge from the Government Health and Safety lead (GHSL) joined us at a recent Property Knowledge Hour to discuss their role as the functional health and safety lead for agencies.

There is a strong push for government to be leaders in health and safety practice and fill four key roles as employer, purchaser, regulator and to set policy and law. The GHSL was set up to support agencies to understand and manage workplace health and safety risk, engage workers and innovate.

GHSL are motivated to strengthen health and safety capability across government. They host several forums to promote cross-sector engagement, provide development and training opportunities and have several resources for health and safety managers and representatives.

Learn more about the fantastic work GHSL are doing to ensure work is healthy and safe for everyone in New Zealand.

Government Health and Safety Lead

Future knowledge hours

We’re always on the lookout for ideas on future knowledge hours. If you have any topics you’d like to hear about or present on, email us.

In late May, we held our latest Property Forum. If you were unable to attend, here are some of the highlights:

• A programme of work is being scoped to address the changes needed to the current Building Code so it better reflects the needs of all New Zealanders.
• MBIE’s Building System Performance team is currently working on climate change initiatives and seismic resilience. An update to the National Seismic Hazard Model is expected later this year.
• The Government Office Accommodation Programme continues to move ahead. The regional hubs programme business case is well advanced and will provide the authorising environment for the establishment of regional hubs. Regional hubs will provide a number of economic, public service and public servant benefits. Progress has also been made on specific hub initiatives in Upper Hutt, Manukau and Porirua.
• DIA is offering Technology Enabled Shared Accommodation (TeSA) services. TeSA allows staff from multiple agencies, working out of a shared accommodation facility, to access and share the common resources at that physical site. We’ve been piloting TeSA at Pastoral House since December 2020 and it is due to start at 8 Willis Street later in June.

We will keep you posted about the next Property Forum.

• Accessibility and inclusion guidance - We are working on accessibility and inclusion guidance to add to our new workplace design guideline, the sections we are focussing on are universal toilets and showers, parents’ rooms and multi-faith rooms. We are aiming to consult with mandated agencies and specialist interest groups in Q3 2022 to gain feedback.

• Review of Building Performance Specifications (BPS) update - A big thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the Building Performance Specifications (BPS). We are now collating all the responses and expect to publish the updated BPS later this year.

• Common Capability Office furniture agreement update – The current agreement expires mid-February 2023. We have been working on the return-to-market for the new workplace and classroom furniture solution, and a request for proposals is now live on GETS. If you are interested being involved, we are currently looking for evaluators. For more information please email the Furniture team.

• Building capability across our government property system - The property capability project continues the mahi on finalising the baseline report which will contribute to our understanding of the capability needs across the property system. This will be circulated amongst the wider stakeholder groups for consensus and used to guide the development of a toolkit, resources, and training provision.

If you’d like to know more, email us.