Travel booking pilot starting soon

Now that we have more relaxed COVID-19 restrictions, our new travel booking pilot kicks off next Wednesday, 23 September.

The six-month pilot will run with an internal dedicated travel booking team of two based at NHQ. For the first three months (September to December 2020), the team will do bookings for NHQ and in the second three months (January to March 2021) will bring in bookings for ELT and Te Ihu. 

Deputy Chief Executive Finance and Business Operations, Darryl Purdy, says the pilot is one of several new initiatives we are introducing that, together, will change the way we consider and organise domestic and non-training-related travel. These include new guidelines for travel and accommodation, a new online travel booking form, better booking processes, and improving our online technology. 

“As an organisation, our travel costs are high and they are growing. As I have mentioned in recent updates, about 5.6% of our annual operating expenditure is on travel, including accommodation, meals, flights, car hire, taxis. We have experienced a 35% cost increase in three years and were over budget last year. In addition to this, a drop in our levy funding due to COVID-19 means we need to ‘tighten our belt’. 

"We also want to ensure that Fire and Emergency is carrying out our functions in a safe and sustainable way to minimise our impact on the environment and give people time back by reducing the amount of time spent travelling.

“As a result, we are introducing a range of measures including reducing our domestic and non-training-related travel spend by up to half.” 

Darryl says the travel restrictions placed on all of us during COVID-19 showed we can manage many of our usual business activities effectively using technology solutions rather than via travelling. 

“I understand there were some challenges with our online technology during the lockdown period, but we are bringing in improvements to this over coming months. 

“The Board has told us they want us to keep building on the positive changes we saw during COVID and interact with each other online as much as possible. They themselves are modelling these changes by replacing some in‑person Board meetings with virtual meetings. 

“The Government has also directed agencies to reduce their environmental impact, demonstrate sustainable practices, and make sure they are delivering value for public money. 

“For those who need to travel frequently, there will be wellbeing benefits and far less down-time, for example, time away from family, waiting in airports, on planes and so on.” 

These changes do not apply to travel for major incident and campaign fire support and NTC will continue to book all training-related travel. 

For more information, please email Travel.Office@fireandemergency.nz or call 04 460 8621. You will receive more details next week when the pilot goes live.