Schooling up council staff on large infrastructure projects is the intention behind an multi-council study tour of Australian developments later this month.

Smartgrowth is organising sending a party of ten delegates across to look at how Australians do sub-divisions.

Bay of Plenty Regional and Tauranga City councils staff members are going to Australia to learn about building cities. Photos: File

The Australian study tour will spend three days in Sydney inspecting local housing sites and two days in Queensland.

The tour party includes an NZ Transport Agency rep, SmartGrowth Implementation Manager Duncan Tindall, and delegates from the three Smartgrowth funding partners; BOP Regional Council, Tauranga City Council and Western Bay of Plenty District Council – the respective councils paying their own staff costs.

The aim of the study tour is to pick up lessons learnt from Australian experience in; Masterplanned greenfield developments, alternative Infrastructure; alternative infrastructure funding models, and urban regeneration.

While there has been a strong focus on selecting sites that will be relevant to Tauranga, it is also accepted that there are relevant learnings to be had from some larger schemes that will be applicable to the future growth of the sub-region.

A debrief will be provided to the Smartgrowth Implementation committee at the August workshop.

The delegates will be a variety of senior strategic planners and infrastructure manager, says Duncan.

'The investments that we are looking at here over the next few years are in the billions of dollars for the infrastructure, and to be able to cope with the growth of the city,” says Duncan.

It's because of the massive growth spurt anticipated as the Papamoa East and Wairakei developments come on stream over the next decade.

'So it's imperative that we actually make those investment decisions wisely and as I say we are dealing in billions of dollars, so being able to get it right is a good investment,” says Duncan.