Consulting for Councils & Large Organisations
Standards, documentation and peer review for organisations that buy fencing repeatedly rather than once.
Why people bring this to somebody outside
An organisation that buys fencing every year has a different problem from a person who buys it once. The individual jobs are usually fine. What costs money is the absence of a standard: every project specified from scratch by whoever is running it, no two contractors quoting the same thing, no consistency between one reserve and the next, and no way to tell whether the price paid last time was reasonable.
I write the standard. A documented fencing specification for the organisation, standard drawings for the types you build most often, and the technical documentation that lets a project manager with no fencing background procure a fence correctly. Once it exists, every future job starts from it.
Alongside that I do the work an in-house team cannot do for itself: independent condition assessments across the portfolio, capital works planning, procurement and tender advice, and peer review of designs or reports prepared by someone else.
Boundary fencing on a retaining wall in a new subdivision. Repeated a hundred times, it needs to be a standard detail.
What this covers
Development of fencing standards and specifications
One document the whole organisation builds to, instead of a decision made afresh each time.
Standard drawings and technical documentation
Drawn details for the fence types you repeat, so nobody redraws them badly.
Asset inspections and condition assessments
Portfolio-wide inspection on a consistent basis, which is what makes the results comparable.
Capital works planning
Renewals and new works programmed and costed across the planning horizon.
Procurement and tender advice
Routes and documents that stand up to your own procurement rules and an audit.
Technical reviews and peer assessments
An independent check on somebody else's design, specification or report.
Who this is for
- Territorial and regional councils with parks, reserves, roading and property portfolios
- Ports, airports and utilities with perimeter security obligations
- Education and health facilities managing boundaries around public sites
- Corporate landowners and farming groups standardising across many properties
What you get
- A written organisational fencing standard and specification
- Standard drawings for the repeated fence types
- Condition and capital works reporting on a consistent basis
- Peer review memoranda on third-party documents
Costed and agreed before I start, never after. A phone call about a straightforward question is usually free.
Often taken together with
Asset Management
Knowing what fencing you own, what condition it is in, and what it is going to cost you over the next ten years.
Read more →Tender & Procurement Services
Getting the job to market properly, so the prices that come back can be compared and relied on.
Read more →Compliance & Standards
Which rules actually apply to this fence, and whether what is proposed will satisfy them.
Read more →Paid for the advice, not for the work that follows
I am a certified fencer and I also own a fencing contracting business. That is stated up front rather than buried, because it is the first thing anybody sensible wants to know about an independent adviser.
The rule is simple and it does not bend. If I am advising you, my contracting company is not tendering for your job. You can have my advice or you can have my crew, and you cannot have both on the same project, because the moment you could the advice stops being worth anything. If you would rather have the fence built than the question answered, I will say so and point you elsewhere.
It works the same way in a dispute. I give the same finding whichever party is paying for the assessment, and if your position is the weaker one you will hear that from me first.
The contracting business is Custom Fencing Ltd, which is where the experience behind all of this comes from - and it is disclosed here so that you can check it rather than discover it.
FCANZ Certified Fencer. The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand assesses fencers against a practical standard that has to be maintained rather than earned once. The reason it matters here: the advice comes from somebody who still has to go out and build to the standard he is describing.
Tell me what you are trying to work out
Most people get in touch because they have a decision to make and nobody independent to check it with - a tender that does not add up, a fence line that keeps failing, a dispute that has stopped moving, or a property they are about to buy. Describe the situation and I will tell you honestly whether it needs me, and what it would take.
021 614 100- nick@customfenceconsulting.co.nz
- 130 Edinburgh Street, Waikouaiti 9510, Otago
- Monday to Friday, 7am - 5.30pm
Based at Waikouaiti in East Otago and working throughout New Zealand. Site work anywhere in the country; desk work - a tender review, a specification, an opinion on a set of photographs - can start the day you send it.