3 Dec 2019
Engineering New Zealand Chief Executive Susan Freeman-Greene says the infrastructure investment report produced by the Wellington Lifelines Project makes a strong economic case for investment in Wellington’s resilience.
“This report is an impressive piece of evidence-based work and deserves everyone’s attention.”
“In our Engineering a Better New Zealand report on seismic resilience, one of our recommendations was to make infrastructure resilience a collective responsibility.
“The Lifelines report provides a compelling business case for investing in Wellington's infrastructure lifelines now to save money later.
“We know that a large earthquake hitting Wellington is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’. We also know there will inevitably be outages – some of them life threatening.
“This report is the kind of evidence we need to persuade people to invest now. It shows there are tangible things we can do to reduce the consequences of a future earthquake, including the length of outages that people and businesses will experience.
“The case for investment in Wellington’s resilience has become clear. Now we need to take action together to safeguard our capital and its communities.”
Notes to reporters
Engineering New Zealand is New Zealand's professional body for engineers, with more than 22,000 members. We represent – and regulate – our members. We also act as the Registration Authority for Chartered Professional Engineers. Previously known as IPENZ, on 1 October 2017 we introduced a new, more inclusive membership pathway and changed our name to better reflect what we do.
For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Amanda Wells on 021 479 885.
