Lessons learned from one of New Zealand’s most challenging civil engineering projects:

rebuilding the earthquake damaged pipes, roads, bridges and retaining walls in the city of
Christchurch 2011 - 2016.

Case Study – Creating a High Performance

Environment, with Intent

Story: Creating an Environment that Delivers High

Performance
Theme: People and Culture

A document that describes a case study on how SCIRT has been designed to create an
environment that delivers high performance.

This document has been provided as an example of a tool that might be useful for other
organisations undertaking complex disaster recovery or infrastructure rebuild programmes.

For more information about this document, visit [Link]

Case Study 2015 -01

Creating a High Performance Environment, with Intent

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Duncan Gibb,

CEO of the Stronger Christchurch Rebuild Team (SCIRT) during
his last few weeks as CEO. We wanted to explore with him
the underpinnings of what has made SCIRT such a special
organisation.

So who are SCIRT?

For those not familiar with SCIRT, it is an alliance that was set up in the
aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, to deliver the more than $2
billion rebuild of damaged horizontal infrastructure across Christchurch.
Bringing together local government and central government infrastructure
owners, along with five major contracting firms, SCIRT is repairing and
rebuilding earthquake damaged fresh-water, storm-water, waste-water and
roading networks across Christchurch.
Forming a new organisation, from scratch, in the midst of a disaster affected
city, and ramping up to deliver one of the largest infrastructure investments
New Zealand has ever seen, is no mean feat. Our team in Resilient
Organisations have been researching SCIRT over the past four years, and
have been impressed overall by what we have found. It is an organisation
that not only uses an innovative model for delivering projects and
rewarding performance, but they also have embraced the challenges of
working with affected communities and ensuring a collaborative ethos
pervades all that they do.
The idea of alliancing in the construction industry is not new. Alliances
are performance-incentivised contractual arrangements, usually
involving an element of shared risk and reward.
What makes SCIRT stand out?
Their deliberate adoption of non-monetary incentives to ensure contract delivery.
Our researchers identified five key aspects that make the SCIRT alliance particularly distinctive:

4.
Alignment of stakeholders to a noble purpose:

1.
Collective sharing of both profit (gain) and loss
creating resilient infrastructure that gives people (pain): resulting from project completion across
security and confidence in the future of all alliance partners
Christchurch
Proactive human resource practices, developed

2.



Collaboration that is driven by a set of six values:
zero harm, community welfare, openness to
learning, collective orientation, generosity & trust,
5.


through their Peak Performance Plan, to ensure:
staff engagement & wellbeing, appropriate
leadership styles, teamwork, collaboration,
and development of people ongoing learning, improvement & innovation,
and transfer of learning to parent organisations

3.
Action based on six exemplar behaviours: striving
for excellence, active listening, open & honest
conversations, courage to speak up, working
together and leading by example

[Link]
In short, SCIRT is intended to be a high performance work Key performance indicators used to judge performance
system with a shared vision and strong values that emphasise specifically include aspects related to how groups are con-
collaboration, learning, and collective ownership. tributing to a high performance environment – with metrics
So what helps translate these goals into a high relating to levels of innovation, collaboration, and learning.
performance work culture at SCIRT? Budget is committed to supporting a peak performance
We went to SCIRT to tease that out. During our discussions environment and teams are proactively coached to work
with Duncan Gibb (CEO), Belinda de Zwart (HR manager) and together effectively. The organisation has a can-do culture,
Rod Cameron (Value Manager) at SCIRT, the thing that struck us with staff encouraged to lead from where they are, taking
was their very deliberate and intentional approach to shaping initiative and being proactive.
the environment within SCIRT to encourage high performance.
Creating the Right Environment
Many of us have read various management books espousing
the importance of a good workplace culture for delivering high We know creating the right environment is vital for
performance. And yet, even though we know the importance an organisation to deliver success, and although SCIRT is
of investing in developing the right organisational culture, when not perfect, they have done an impressive job in a very
the pressure comes on, we let our focus slip onto other aspects. difficult setting. The key lesson from SCIRT is that
SCIRT is working in the ultimate high-pressure environment and an organisation’s culture doesn’t just emerge – it is a
yet, right from day one, the SCIRT leadership team have kept function of the way the organisation is designed, and the
this as a top priority. values and behaviours that the organisation rewards.
Delivering high performance requires intentionality,
Delivering High Performance
investment and infrastructure. SCIRT illustrates this through
Everything about the organisation is intentionally designed to its vision and values (intentionality), investment (training,
create an environment that delivers high performance. The coaching and mentoring) and infrastructure (peak
offices are designed especially to encourage teams to innovate performance plan).
and collaborate. When staff are seconded to SCIRT they are
Creating the right environment within your organisation
encouraged to put aside their ‘home’ organisation identity and
needs to feature in every decision you make. In Duncan’s
start working in teams named the Red Team, Blue Team, Yellow
words “Why leave high performance to chance?”
Team etc, to break down traditional affiliations. The funding
structure is designed so that the highest performing teams
get to grow their share of the available work (encouraging
competition), but all teams share the financial penalties if
one team doesn’t deliver (encouraging collaboration, where
high performing teams support the lower performing teams
to deliver).

The SCIRT offices are designed especially

to encourage teams to innovate and
collaborate. When staff are seconded to SCIRT
they are encouraged to put aside their ‘home’
organisation identity and start working in teams.

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