What’s behind a relationship built to last a natural disaster?

In this series, we’ll explore the power of collaboration and co-creation with our clients. These partnerships showcase how we rise to the world’s greatest challenges together.

It takes extreme heat to create the steel we use in much of today’s infrastructure. In nature, it requires both heat and pressure to make diamonds.

Sometimes, professional relationships are made the same way—under intense pressure. Often, the heat is turned up.

Take, for instance, Grant Maxwell’s ongoing relationship with Alec Louverdis, who has dual roles at the Nelson City Council and with Nelson Tasman Civil Defence and Emergency Management.

Maxwell is our growth leader for infrastructure resilience in New Zealand. It’s an essential role in a country where cyclones, earthquakes, atmospheric rivers, and other natural disasters are common. And building trusting relationships is crucial to success under pressure.

“My relationship with Stantec is built on the relationship with people like Grant. With my civil defense hat on, the relationships are even more important,” Louverdis says. “And the reason they’re more important is because we are making … decisions that affect people’s lives in an instant.”

You know who is calm, you know who will give you the correct information. … To know that you’re on the same wavelength in terms of what you need to have delivered.

Making decisions and seeing the outcomes

In August 2022, Nelson and the surrounding Tasman area experienced a once-in-a-100-year rainfall event—three times in three days.

The rainfall triggered hundreds of landslides. Nearly 30 inches (more than 700 millimetres) of rain forced the Maitai River over its banks in the largest flooding event in more than 50 years. More than 1,000 people were evacuated.

No one died, but the devastation was everywhere.

And that’s when Maxwell and our team came to support Louverdis and Civil Defence.

“You know that there is a common goal,” Maxwell says, “and you build trust and respect really fast in those environments of disasters. Alec and I are really fortunate to be able to do that. We had a great relationship outside of emergencies, but it’s in the heat of those emergencies where good decisions are made.

“And the trust is really high. It’s so satisfying to be able to make great decisions and see outcomes where you know that you’ve worked with someone else. I find that satisfying.”

When disasters strike, Louverdis swaps his city council responsibilities for that of Civil Defence group controller. That means he is the chief decision-maker for handling disasters in his region of New Zealand. There is a lot to manage. And it’s stressful.

That’s when Louverdis implicitly relies on Maxwell and his team.

“I know I can task Grant and his team to undertake certain things, and the information that I get back is critical and given to me in the time that I need in order to be able to make critical decisions,” he says. “I need information. I need it quickly. And I need the best information that I can have.

“And I need a trusted partner that can handle the geotech. … It’s a synergy, but it is built on relationships.”

Grant Maxwell and Alec Louverdis

The cost of rebuilding, building back better, and resilience

After disasters, there is recovery. And it’s expensive.

For Louverdis and Maxwell, the idea of building back better—with resilience in mind—is essential. But as engineers, it also relies on the numbers.

“What does ‘build back better’ mean?” Louverdis asks. “Does it mean building back better to handle a 1-in-10-year event or a 1-in-100-year event? Or a Cyclone Gabrielle event?

“The difference in costs, because putting back what you had there and building back better can be a quantum of 10, 100 times the cost.”

Maxwell emphasizes the value of thinking beyond the disaster. Really, thinking ahead of it.

And it boils down to the “7-to-1 principle.” This is how the math works: $1 spent in resilience is generally accepted to equal to about $7 spent in response and recovery.

So, clearly, the value is being ready before a disaster strikes.

“The difficulty is understanding how to spend that money wisely, making it available, and talking to clients about what’s the appropriate use of money,” Maxwell says. “We all understand that we’re not going to have the perfect amount of money to be able to do everything we want. So, we've got to make the best choices with what we’ve got.

“That takes a bit of thinking out of the box. It takes a bit of negotiating but also a bit a prioritization around what’s sensible.”

Always looking to improve

One thing Maxwell has learned from repeated disasters is this: There is space to improve.

“I continually watch it, and I ask: How can we better be better?” Maxwell says. “How can we make better decisions? How do we be better for our communities? How do we not cost more than it is genuinely required to do these activities?”

And that led Maxwell to some self-evaluation and assessment of the consultancy industry as a whole. He’s worried about “privateering” during disasters.

Maxwell and Louverdis teamed up on a small project to create a framework extension within the national emergency management guidelines that could be replicated elsewhere in the country. It’s a mission that can involve more than just the large design firms but smaller ones in various communities.

“Clearly our clients love it because they’re seeing opportunities to save some money but also get the best out of the technical experts,” Maxwell says. “It's a cool little project, but it’s gained a lot of noise around the country.”

Relationships matter in the best—and worst—of times

Disasters grab the headlines. And for a good reason.

But strong relationships grow when there is regular, day-to-day contact, too.

“I know what Alec needs, when he needs it, and how he needs that,” Maxwell says. “The good part about being a team is understanding who’s got what role. We’ve been in the trenches together, and it’s been challenging.

“But I think underlying all of that, we’ve bonded and created a really, really respectful relationship about how we can be better for our community.”

Louverdis agrees.

“You know who you can, in an emergency, turn to,” he says. “You know who is calm, you know who will give you the correct information. … In terms of the relationship that we’ve developed for this, it’s just a natural gut instinct. To know that you’re on the same wavelength in terms of what you need to have delivered.”

And, in the end, it’s those relationships that are more valuable than diamonds and stronger than steel.

With every community, we redefine what’s possible. Through collaboration with our clients, together we will unlock outcomes neither could achieve alone.