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June 12, 2015 is my last day at Housing New Zealand.

I am extremely proud of my team (past and present) and what they have achieved over the last 3 years, under various changes in management, group structure and the omnipresent political and media environment.

I can confidently say I leave the property development management team in a great space for the future. However, ALL the credit goes to the team I happened to be nominated ‘manager’ for. The team’s hard work means architects around New Zealand are leaving no stone unturned in design, we are pretty much joined at the hip with Councils around the country – especially the HPO in Auckland, resource consents are being pumped out, we are invigorating asset and tenancy management with placemaking concepts, financial feasibilities are positive, investment business cases are making sense, framing is going up and homes are being delivered!

Specifically, I point to these notable achievements that the team, of course with the help of many others at HNZ, have delivered and continue to deliver on:

1. 399 Manchester, a private public partnership with Legacy, creating a truly mixed tenure apartment development within the four avenues of Christchurch.
2. The merit award at Property Council for the Garrison Henshaw aged resident apartment project built by NZ Strong.
3. Minor redevelopment ( infill and tranche 3) programme of 250 homes under Auckland’s operative plan.
4. The design and deliver factory that is now the Special Housing Area Redevelopment Programme for another 500 homes in Auckland.
5. Together with the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Team, the factory that is now the infill housing programme for 700 homes in Christchurch.
6. Our regional programme with projects in Hamilton, Tauranga and kick starting the regeneration of Maraenui in Napier– a subdivision built at record speed, cutting through all bureaucratic tape.
7. Getting that first significant board decision to start  civil works  for what will be 500 plus homes at McLennan in 2012 and now building homes and selling superlots to increase affordable housing in Auckland.
8. Sealing the deal with Willis Bond on the Lake Pupuke Drive mixed tenure apartment project in Takapuna.
9. Regenerating the socially challenging suburb of Pomare in the Hutt Valley in another private public partnership.
10. Long term divestment, refurbishment and redevelopment solutions for earthquake prone apartment complexes around New Zealand including substantial apartment tower blocks in Auckland and Wellington.
11. Our role analysing aged care solutions and the retirement sector as part of MBIE/Treasury’s Social Housing Reform Project.
12. Establishment of the Auckland and Christchurch developer and builder panel.
13. Overhaul of the 100% HNZ owned projects design-build contractor procurement process to make it more commercial.
14. Comprehensive assessment of  Auckland CBD potential apartment development holdings.
15. Significant Auckland suburban land holdings regeneration analysis.
16. The Wellington CBD apartment development strategy and implementation – with four exciting apartment projects currently in design.
17. Working with Tamaki Redevelopment Company kick starting what will now become their development programme.
18. Demolition of what only can be called some of New Zealand’s most brutal past attempts at social housing.
19. Process creation that is working to enable continuous improvement.
20. Many more successes, too numerous to list.
21. There were also a number of false starts and abrupt changes in direction – these learning opportunities have added to the collective IP and will contribute to eventual success.

It has been enjoyable working with the vast number of consultants, developers, builders and other social housing providers involved in our projects from all around New Zealand. The secrets I believe to a good and profitable relationship with Housing New Zealand are:
– Be flexible, acknowledge it’s a different beast and changes do happen. There is a strong desire and government mandate to be fair to all suppliers which often manifests itself in rigid rules. There are so many stakeholders to consider and ambiguities to navigate that are not typical in the private sector. However, if you are prepared, do your job well, stick at it and add value and save money you will get there.
– Balance the bright ideas and innovation with hard work and practical detail; don’t forget the detail, especially regarding infrastructure!
– Don’t take a contract for HNZ or the expert employees, that work with a passion and extremely hard at HNZ for granted.
– Understand that HNZ exists to house New Zealand’s most vulnerable – our tenants are our business. It is incredibly pleasing when architects, consultants, contractors and developers really attempt to understand the complexities of the HNZ tenant. That is when real solutions come to fruition and the entire corporation provides buy-in.

I thank the three managers I have reported to past and present at HNZ – I am the better from being under each of their tutelage and did my best to have our team perform to their stretch expectations. I really appreciate the opportunity to have worked with my compatriots in the ADG leadership team and I also thank those advisors whom have provided our team with a huge injection of commercial acumen and experience from different perspectives.

Finally and most notably I look back on each of my team members professional and leadership growth. We started with a hands off private public partnership approach on all projects – our role was to be the client and enlist and rely on the collective industry wide expertise of the development community.
I leave now as the development managers are individually responsible for the entire development process from site due-diligence and design, through to consenting and construction. Despite the obstacles thrown at this team – from internal red tape to political changes in direction, to external audits and sometimes what appears to be rewriting the rule book – the HNZ property development management team pushes on, backs itself and is a force to be reckoned with. These guys know their stuff.

Cheers and thanks guys. Go build some houses !

Andrew Crosby
Former Manager (Property) Development Management at Housing New Zealand
+64 21 982 444
andrew.crosby@aenspire.com

In this blog series we look at technology in real estate development and construction. Today we interview Chris Lin (on the right), co-founder of mobile app start-up Pic2Paper.com

Chris, 

Tell me about your background and what motivates an ambitious property development manager to change lanes into software development?

My Co-Creator, Chris Farhi and I originally became friends during University. Since then, we have worked as professionals in the property industry primarily in development and consulting.

We pursued Pic2Paper because we saw both a need and an opportunity. The journey from the original idea to the App Store has been very exciting.

I look at Pic2Paper and I see what appears to be a solution to a frustration you obviously experienced in your day job. Am I right and what led you to conceive the idea for Pic2Paper?

That’s spot on. Property is physical, so in our professional lives we often take photos, for example during site visits. Pic2Paper provides a quick tool for presenting photos and notes within reports. This enables you to capture and present the critical information from a site visit – photos and notes – using a quick and elegant tool.  This delivers substantial time savings and increased accuracy, which is important for professionals.

While conceived with property in mind, Pic2Paper has a much wide user base across both professional and personal uses.

We were surprised that an App did not already exist for this. Pic2Paper is not mind-blowing from a technical perspective, but it is an elegant tool that solves a very real problem.

You had this idea and then you had to convert it into a marketable product – tell me how your implementation progressed?

Pic2Paper has been a journey for both of us and a major learning curve. It all started with a scribble on a piece of paper that we developed into a working idea. Initially the idea was much more complicated, but over time we simplified it down to its essence and in the process it became relevant to a much wider range of users.

We worked with a local app development firm to finalise the design and programming of the app. The team there were a great young crew with a passion for apps, which made the process really enjoyable. Meanwhile we completed the other collateral ourselves (website, social media, video, etc), which was another learning curve!

The application looks simple to use and based on a basic premise – what do you see as the 3 most important benefits your software provides?

The three key benefits are:

1. Streamlining what is otherwise a very tedious manual process:taking photos, taking notes separately, downloading the photos, collating them together, and then presenting them within a report. This process can literally take more than an hour, whereas Pic2Paper can create a report in a few seconds. This saves time and therefore saves money for the business / client.
2. Enhanced accuracy because the photos, notes and doodles can be completed in real time (while out and about) so there is no data loss.
3. The app automatically creates high quality reports, which means that even ‘quick’ photos and notes can be instantly presented to a professional standard.

There are some other subtle benefits, like automatic time stamping of photos, which also provides greater information than would otherwise be available from manually created reports.

Who is going to get most value from using Pic2Paper?

Whilst the idea originated from a property background, we believe that anyone who takes photos, particularly for work, can benefit from the app. At the end of the day, being able to caption a photo adds value to the photo.

Perhaps, a modelling agency taking head-shots with a description of name / height of each model, then sent off to a client for consideration. Perhaps, a botanical scientist who wishes to take time capture photos of the growth of a plant. The user base is extremely wide, and the layout / presentation just wraps everything up in a complete package.

Even in a personal sense, holiday shots with a note about the location, event, scenario etc might be worth recording.

Linkedin is how I found out that you had launched your application – what other marketing channels are you utilizing and where do you think this will end up?

We are primarily using word of mouth, both ‘in person’ and using social media. Using social media, we have already been approached by a number of professional institutes who will be featuring the app in their publications as they see the app as being a valuable tool for their members.

Chris, it was great talking to you. One last question – in retrospect these solutions seem obvious, so what’s next on your radar?

Thanks for your time also Andrew. We have one or two other ideas floating around, which admittedly I won’t disclose! At this stage Pic2Paper is our focus, and with a global playing field we’ll just have to see how it all pans out. We are also looking to gear up for Pic2Paper’s release on Android. Spread the word!

Sure will – I look forward to the Android version!

Contact: Chris Lin Co-creator – Pic2Paper chris@pic2paper.com
Get your app at www.pic2paper.com 

Interviewed by Andrew.Crosby@aenspire.com
Andrew founded a start-up software company in 2000 “CollaborIT” specialising in online collaboration for construction and development projects. Since then he has taken an active interest in how to improve the intellectual mechanics and productivity in property development and construction. Andrew has run into the founders of Pic2Paper (Chris and Chris) now for few years at various events and the occasional business dealing.

From the aenspire:educate archives we present ‘Town Centre Principles – United States Selection’.

TownCentres-Aenspire.pdf

We will look to update this work with the latest and greatest Town Centre projects on this blog.

andrew.crosby@aenspire.com
www.aenspire.com

In this blog series we look at technology in real estate development and construction. Today we interview Antonia and David the founders of an ambitious new start-up ‘Acuite’ – soon to be publicly launched.

Antonia, how did you and David get started on the road to entrepreneurship?

Both David and I have always had the motivation to create something big, bigger than us, to add value to others, create a legacy and become successful. Since we completed our qualifications, we secured good jobs, built a house and started settling in…But the motivation was still itching, and we were not content. The hardest part was getting started. 

Our entire careers were built around the property and construction industry, an industry we are extremely passionate about. We were running multi-million dollar projects with extremely lean margin levels (5%) and significant risk profile. We weren’t surprised to learn that on a global level 77% of executives experience under-performing projects, and that 50% of these projects experience cost over-runs of between 10 and 200%. The sad thing is, often for many construction companies a project that has made no margin is still considered as a good outcome.

We decided to do something about it, we dedicated our entire nights and weekends to develop a visual representation of a concept we had. We joined forces with The Icehouse (NZ’ leading business incubation centre) and went through a comprehensive market validation phase. Once we started to see really strong traction from the market we decided to take the leap, re-mortgage our home, quit our day jobs and dedicate ourselves to this venture in full capacity.

Tell us about Acuite – what’s your elevator pitch?

77% of executives in the construction industry are currently experiencing under performing projects. The problem? – Time delays, poor estimating practices, failed risk management, and poor performance by sub-contractors. The solution? Enter Acuite.

Acuite is a cloud based SaaS web application that provides real time visibility and analysis of critical performance metrics across projects.

This enables firms to better manage risk while maximising value & performance.

What sets us apart? – Our Industry expertise, market positioning, algorithms, intuitive design and product development in conjunction with three leading NZ organizations.

For our audience, mainly property development, consulting and construction professionals, what do you see as the three most important functions of your software?

1. We provide real time visibility across portfolios and into projects through collating & displaying real-time metrics & critical KPI data via user friendly drill down dashboards. Additionally, all team members can make decisions based on up-to-date and accurate information from every level of your operation.

2. Because critical metrics are available real time, we can cut the times currently spent of manualised reporting processes. This also provides one source of truth and a consistent view of performance for all members of the organization.   

3. In complementing a comprehensive risk management feature set, we provide a unique internal Benchmarking ability that means risks across the organization can be easily identified and dealt with, before it is too late.

I understand you have three of New Zealand’s top mid tier contractors on board – can you tell me who your target market is and will New Zealand be enough?

We are fortunate to work with some of the most innovative, entrepreneurial and largest construction firms in NZ. These companies are paving the future for something global, they see our vision and recognize its value. They have been extremely supportive and are playing a significant part in the Acuite journey.

Our target market is mid-tier to large scale commercial construction firms, with an annual turnover of $50m to $300m. The market size in NZ is limited and our strategy from day one is to create a global success story. We are starting off with NZ and AU, followed by the US.

How did you find the recent Ice Angels investor pitch evening?  – I was there and it looked a daunting prospect, although your presentation was polished and you looked totally in control.

It was nerve-racking because we knew how significant the opportunity was, failing was not an option. It was an opportunity to showcase our vision and achievements to technology, business experts and high net worth individuals. Very similar to the Dragons Den, we had 8 minutes to pitch why Acuite was the best investment opportunity for them.  We practiced the pitch for three days pretty much full time, it was worth it – we attracted significant interest and currently going through the due diligence process.

Do you have any suggestions for those budding techpreneurs with ideas but not sure where to start?

Ok, so here are our practical tips; 

1. Define clearly what pain you are solving and what is your proposition

2. Undertake a market validation analysis – talk to your target market, ask all of them the same questions and as a result conclude what the market wants / needs are (you will be surprised because what you think the market want and need is most likely different to what you originally had in mind, that’s good!)

3. If the market needs are severe and you conclude that there is an opportunity, take the next step – invest couple of thousands of dollars and create a visual prototype of your solution

4. Pre-sell your product to prospective customers (start with those you interviewed at the market validation phase).

5. If you followed 1 to 4 you should have some good traction, now you need to start building a minimum viable version of your product. You can either do this yourself, bring together people that can help, or raise some money to get started from family and friends. 

What have been your biggest obstacles so far?

When we first started the journey we had another co-founder, we were a solid team of three. Building a start-up is time consuming and not easy, unfortunately due to family commitments he had to step down. A third of our resource and funding had disappeared instantly.

There are constant obstacles, and you just have to be persistent and not give up. We keep saying to ourselves, if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Who are your role models, those that inspire you to give up your day job and tackle such a project as Acuite. 

I love reading about NZ’s global tech companies that started from nothing. Reading Derek Hendly’s book ‘Heart to Start’ was a significant inspirational boost when we first started. 

Finally, tell me where you will be in 2025 – should I be looking at the digital billboards (whatever new technology they will be by then) in Times Square?

Yes, we aim to become a global leader in intelligent technology for the construction industry. By 2025, productivity in the construction sector would increase significantly, and Acuite would save construction firms across the globe billions of dollars on an annual basis.

Contact Antonia Speight +64 21 680 609  antonia@acuite.co.nz

Interviewed by Andrew.Crosby@aenspire.com
Andrew founded a start-up software company in 2000 “CollaborIT” specialising in online collaboration for construction and development projects. Since then he has taken an active interest in how to improve the intellectual mechanics and productivity in property development and construction. Andrew has been a sounding board and supporter of Acuite and the solutions it provides to industry wide under-performance since its inception.

www.aenspire.com

Star Architects, Celebrity Architects and Architects known widely simply because they are in all the magazines, have become part of the common built form vernacular.

I have found myself recently using the term ‘starchitect’ again after a multi-year hiatus. I think it has something to do with these so called elitist architects, whilst always recognised for their notable public and commercial buildings, have now again entered residential development. Of course many famous architects in the past have always being doing this but it was during the previous boom that really got into profiling and publicly associating developments with these masters of architecture:
http://www.metropolismag.com/April-2006/Starchitect-Condos-2005/

I recall one brush I had with starchitecture; it was one hell of a humid day, I had just emerged from the Boston subway at the Kendall Square Station, my destination an old brick building that now housed the MIT Center for Real Estate. With the sweat increasing I found myself walking past the most odd of buildings, a cartoon style structure – the MIT strata center.

Source: http://www.eitc.org/ 

To take a break and soak up some air-conditioning I made a concerted effort to walk through the building on my way home after class. It was very interesting inside and out. A little research that night uncovered the building had some issues with surprise, surprise some of the details and MIT had sued Frank Gehry:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-08-17/bashing-architects-with-lawsuit-only-kills-innovation-james-s-russell

Since that fateful commission Frank Gehry has designed some notable apartment and condominium buildings.

New York by Gehry
Source: http://www.newyorkbygehry.com/

The apartment building developers obviously targeted the appeal of Gehry’s reputation in naming the building after him – here’s an interesting article about living in what some big applers call a work of art :
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/nyregion/living-inside-new-york-by-gehry.html

Opus Hong Kong
Source: http://www.opushongkong.com/

Opus, breaks all sorts of $ records, significantly helped by its dramatic location perched on ‘The Peak’ in Hong Kong as shown in http://fortune.com/2012/11/15/inside-frank-gehrys-surreal-opus-hong-kong/

Some recently designed buildings by other Starchitects include:

Herzog and De-Meuron Canary WharfSource: http://www.archdaily.com/529812/canary-wharf-development-including-herzog-and-de-meuron-tower-wins-planning-approval/

Zaha Hadid 520 W 28th St New York
Source: http://www.e-architect.co.uk/new-york/520-west-28th-street

Phillipe Starck Yoo Montreal (just broken ground April 2015)Source: http://www.yoomontreal.com/

Of course Starck is well know for his interiors and this development does not dissapoint.
Source: http://www.yoomontreal.com/

Typically the idea is to make money off the architects name – one source quotes “Having a celebrity architect design a project adds a couple hundred thousand dollars, or an additional 1 to 3 percent,” says developer Aby Rosen, who owns the Seagram Building.

Of course just like the Stata Center these buildings can backfire on the architect and the developer using the architects name or at least produce mixed results as this article, albeit pre the recent surge in NY apartment values, describes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/realestate/starchitect-buildings-test-the-value-of-a-name.html

That means there are also plenty of Starchitect plans that just don’t get off the ground (end of a cycle anyone?) for example Santiago Calatrava’s 80 South Street. Santiago is arguably best known for his bridges not condo towers though! – as I describe in a previous blog.

For another perspective on Starchitecture in general you may want to get hold of a copy of the book STARCHITECTURE Scenes, Actors and Spectacles in Contemporary Cities by Davide Ponzini and Michele Nastasi, 2011

Andrew.Crosby@aenspire.com
www.aenspire.com