You can’t manage what you haven’t measured: the execution test for water reform starts now

Published: The Post

Councils have historically delivered only 60 to 80 per cent of the water investment they planned.[1] This sobering number in the DIA’s Water Sector Performance Report should make every new water entity uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. Set that against the $48 billion now signalled in councils’ delivery plans over the next decade and, on that pattern, the shortfall runs to between $10 billion and $19 billion of pipes, treatment plants and renewals that are promised and budgeted but won’t get built.

New Zealand’s water reform has crossed from policy to practice. The first new council-controlled water organisations went live on 1 July, including multi-council organisations, Waikato’s IAWAI and Waikato Waters, and Wellington’s Tiaki Wai – and the first standalone water bills have now started landing in letterboxes. Nobody yet knows whether the new entities can deliver what many of their councils could not: safe, reliable and affordable water services.

Organisationally, the new water entities are starting from a low base, and under the new regulatory regime that includes financial ringfencing of water services. Many councils have run water services without metering consumption and without the management-grade cost data any comparable business would consider basic. Most had no standalone profit and loss for water at all. Without absolute clarity on the total cost of renewing a kilometre of pipe, the promise to complete a ten-year capital plan in full rests on guesswork. Poor cost data is not the only reason the delivery record sits at 60 to 80 per cent, but it is one of them.

New water organisations face greater central government oversight. The Commerce Commission is building its economic regulation baseline through information disclosure ahead of the full regime arriving in a few years. The easy reading in a brand-new boardroom is that all of this is a compliance burden, driving costs that customers will ultimately carry. I would urge every new board and executive team to flip that narrative, and to see the reporting not as compliance, but as a mirror on your own performance, and a tool for managing it. The data the Commission wants is the same picture of cost and performance a well-run business would build for itself anyway. The regulator is asking water providers to know themselves – warts and all.

Wellington felt this first only because it went first. Tiaki Wai began life with a planned metering programme costed at more than half a billion dollars and pricing projections that drew immediate public challenge.[2] Their initial figures were based on inherited Wellington Water data. Once Tiaki Wai revised the underlying assumptions, they were able to lower the long-term projections by hundreds of dollars per household. This experience illustrates the broader legacy challenge – you can’t manage what you haven’t accurately measured. The new water services organisations will be judged on whether their numbers are credible, explainable, and traceable from day one. Building public confidence in pricing is a critical first step, as that trust supports the significant infrastructure investment in the years ahead.

Trust is now measured household by household, and transparency is critical. Direct billing gives homes and businesses a line of sight to the cost of water that rates never provided, and expectations climb with every invoice. People who can see what they are paying will want to see what they are getting.

The prize for getting this right is real money. The DIA’s sector working group puts productivity gains at 10 to 30 per cent. Against the $48 billion of planned investment, even the bottom of that range is billions of dollars – money that flows into better infrastructure or eases pressure on household bills. 

Those gains will not come from procurement and workforce capacity alone. They come from the technology and data standards that make management by evidence possible. Better information also reduces the quantum of infrastructure spend needed, because you know which assets are actually failing rather than guessing. Delay compounds the cost. Without productivity gains, customers will carry the cost of reform.

Closing the gap is unglamorous work. Meters on consumption, cost visibility down to the asset, and billing that shows customers what they are paying for and why. The providers that build that discipline in their first years, while systems and habits are still forming, will find the new regime holds no fear. Those that defer it will spend the next decade explaining variances to a regulator and to sceptical customers.

The sector has spent a decade discussing reform. The next decade will be defined by execution. The delivery plans are approved and the water bills, separated out from rates, are already arriving. What gets built now, and what it costs, is the main event.

The organisations that succeed will be the ones that treat every number the regulator asks for as a number they wanted anyway.

Jason Perera has over 16 years’ global experience across sales, marketing, technology and customer experience, and works with Energy and Water organisations to align technology investment with strategic priorities. He is the APAC Commercial Director for Gentrack Group.

[1] Water Services Sector Performance: Report of the Working Group, May 2026, p. 21

[2] RNZ, “Half a billion dollar price-tag for Wellington water meter roll-out not ‘credible’ – mayor,” 23 May 2026

NZ Herald, “Wellington water meters rollout cost balloons from $144m to $590m,” 3 May 2026: