NZ Institute of Quantity Surveyors’ National Conference

Thursday 23 June 2005

Greetings. Welcome to Christchurch, the eternal Crusaders' city and just by pure chance I'm sure, also the site for the first test against the Lions this weekend. This coincidence has led me to conclude that I am probably dealing with a very wily conference crowd indeed.

Beating Brits to bits aside, I'm surprised that most of you could find the time to attend this event. If you have not been here for a few years, you may have noticed Christchurch is a lot larger and spread out than it used to be. People with road maps even five years old find that they tend to get lost a lot on the city outskirts.

In fact, we are pretty much turning into a city that having grown massively, is now starting to look at just how and where we do it in future.

Our scoping project for the future is called the Greater Christchurch Urban development Strategy Forum. When we asked the public for input, we got literally thousands of submissions.

It is a stunning result that shows not only that democracy is still alive and well but also that people give a very big damn about how and where they live.

For a city like Christchurch, where quality of life is our point of difference, it is hugely critical that we get this issue right.

At present we are a city where firms can easily move their people in but find they face a hell of a fight moving them out again. I'd like to see it stay that way.

As a recovering accountant, I believe that Quantity Surveyors enjoy about the same excitement status as bean counters.

For both our professions they don't want us, until they want us, and then do they want us.

Just as it is crucial to get the numbers right for any project, so too is it to get the survey details right.

What I would like you to away from this conference is the idea that what you do is crucial to how cities like ours grow and thrive, or don't.

When you look at the big issues like climate change and the prospect of peak oil producing massive impacts on how and where we live, the one certainty is that no profession can any longer work in splendid isolation.

We need to take on board the idea that concepts like sustainability can no longer just be weasel words to make development look responsible. It really has to be responsible.