Contractors making repairs in the Brynderwyn Hills earlier this year. Photo: Supplied / Waka Kotahi
New Zealand's vulnerability to severe weather events is undermining long-term business confidence and resilience within the country's civil construction sector.
The latest Civil Contractors New Zealand and Teletrac Navman survey shows only 7 percent of respondents believe the country's infrastructure can cope with extreme weather - a fall of 10 percentage points from last year.
Civil Contractors NZ chief executive Alan Pollard said the industry needed clearer project pipelines from central and local government in the face of climate change.
"Too often you'll find on both sides of the political spectrum there are a lot of promises made about funding being made available. But for us, we actually need projects to be built. So schedule the projects, fund the projects and commit to a timeframe and actually get on and do it.
"If that doesn't happen it creates uncertainty across the industry.
"One of the big things that came out of our survey was the impact a lack of confidence in things actually being done is having on the broader sector."
Around half of businesses wanted more access to on-site technology in order to help deliver mandatory reporting on decarbonisation and sustainability efforts.
Meanwhile, more frequent and severe storms were causing unprecedented levels of destruction.
"There is very low confidence in the industry in the ability of New Zealand's infrastructure to actually cope with these things," Pollard said.
"It's pretty obvious when you look at what happened up north and what happened in the Hawke's Bay - massive devastation to infrastructure."
Contractors were often first responders in a natural disaster, working to repair and restore damaged infrastructure.
According to the industry survey, 47 percent of respondents had been involved in emergency or disaster response over the past year.
Nearly 70 percent of businesses said ongoing projects had been impacted by extreme weather events, causing project delays, insurance claims and the need to renegotiate contracts.
