Investment Panel Decisions - August Meeting

The Investment Panel met on 27 August to review the revised portfolio and considered a number of related papers and business cases.

The investment Panel received and approved a schedule of work designed to improve the Fire and Emergency capability in project and programme management. This is part of the broader sweep of work to develop excellence in project, programme and portfolio management. One component of the work was a simplified approach to reporting. For further information, please contact the National Manager, Investment and Portfolio, Mike O’Hara.

The Investment Panel received and accepted reports on the Fire and Emergency capital programme and investment portfolio.

The Investment Panel further reviewed the portfolio of projects recently published. The purpose of the review is to continue to understand and refine the achievability and affordability of the projects. Money for all portfolio projects comes from the Fire and Emergency pool of unallocated funds.

The Investment Panel considered a scaling and phasing approach that keeps expenditure close to unallocated fund target and keeps achievability at its highest, during a time of significant change for our organisation. The Investment Panel has since gained ELT’s approval for the portfolio, including the funding.

As part of implementing the recently agreed Fire and Emergency portfolio, the Investment Panel received several business cases and change requests for consideration:

• Psychological Wellbeing Workshops. The Fire and Emergency Safety, Health and Wellbeing Strategy recognises psychological wellbeing as one of our three broad critical risk areas, and identifies acute and chronic psychological stress and illness as a top ten critical risk for Fire and Emergency. The Investment Panel received and approved a proposal to continue with workshops designed to help manage the risk of psychological workplace harm.  For further information, please contact Chief Advisor Safety Health and Wellbeing, April Christie.

• Volunteer Engagement Framework. The need for a new volunteer engagement model was first identified prior to the establishment of Fire and Emergency. As it would not be possible to establish these new relationships prior to establishing the new organisation, the legislation allowed for arrangements to remain in place for continuity purposes to enable Fire and Emergency to continue to deliver services. The Investment Panel received a business case to establish a longer term solution. The Investment Panel had a considered discussion with the project team but did not approve the proposed approach. An alternate approach was discussed and the project team was requested to re-submit a proposal accordingly. For further information, please contact Chief Advisor Volunteerism, Brighid Jamieson.

• Te Kei Live Fire Training Facility. The Investment Panel approved the proposal for the Te Kei container-based RFTB (Realistic Fire Training Building) facility, including the need to provision for up to three years of operational funding. For further information, please contact National Manager, People and Workforce Capability.

• Next Generation Type 3 appliance. The Investment Panel approved a change request for the project to continue specialist procurement support for next stage of the project. For further information, please contact Project Sponsor, Russell Wood.

• Mobility programme. The Investment Panel received a proposal from the Chief Information and Technology Officer regarding the Mobility programme. The Investment Panel continues to recognise the importance of the programme and agreed to an approach to sustain the current mobility pilot while further analysis of costs and benefits is conducted. For further information, please contact the Chief Information and Technology Officer, Murray Mitchell.

• Risk Reduction base platform. The Investment Panel noted a proposed change to the approach for procuring the solution and agreed to receive a short approval paper from the Chief Information and Technology Officer, Murray Mitchell.