Multi-Criteria Assessment System for Auckland Council Capital Works
From proposal to delivery — process, legal framework, automation and critique
The Multi-Criteria Assessment is a proposed process for Auckland Council capital works that scores suppliers and projects on published weightings: budget certainty 30–40 percent, delivery reliability 20–25 percent, pre-design 10–20 percent and community outcomes 10–15 percent, with front-end gates and past-performance scores fed back into future evaluations.
Prepared for advocacy and internal implementation review · October 2026
This is the full report for the first entry in the projects register (status: proposed / in development). Section numbering follows the original document.
1. Executive Summary
A pure “prefer supplier” panel model is efficient for volume but fails when secondary competition is weak, past performance is not rigorously scored and fed forward, and projects enter the market with incomplete pre-design. Auckland Council Group already possesses the policy instruments (Group Procurement Strategy, Better Value Projects principles, Procurement Policy) and systems (Ready Contracts, Sentient, ATPACE, SAP, eTenderBox) to run a multi-criteria assessment that explicitly balances Delivery reliability, Budget certainty, Community engagement, and Pre-design accuracy.
This report sets out an end-to-end process from proposal through delivery that is fully compatible with the Local Government Act 2002, the Government Procurement Rules (including the 5th edition economic-benefit requirements), Auckland Council’s own frameworks, and the Construction Procurement Guidelines. Most data collation can be automated inside existing platforms, saving substantial staff time while preserving the human judgement and audit trail required for fairness and LGOIMA robustness.
Brutal assessment: The system only works if front-end gates are enforced, weightings are deliberate and published, soft criteria are turned into measurable KPIs, and performance scores are actually used. Anything less is a slower version of the status quo that continues to produce overruns.
2. Purpose and Context
Auckland Council Group spends approximately $7 billion annually with suppliers. Capital works have a documented history of budget overruns, scope creep and delivery slippage driven primarily by weak early problem definition, incomplete designs, and insufficient use of past supplier performance. Preferred-supplier panels (physical works, professional services, Healthy Waters MSAs, etc.) reduce transaction costs but risk lock-in and reduced price tension when secondary procurement is not competitive.
The Better Value Projects initiative and the Group Procurement Strategy (endorsed 2025/26) already direct “better, faster, cheaper” outcomes: clear problem definition, standard designs, maximum prices, past performance, local/diverse suppliers, whole-of-life value, and supplier accountability. This report operationalises those directions into a single, auditable multi-criteria process from proposal to delivery.
3. Legal and Policy Framework
3.1 Statutory requirements
- Local Government Act 2002 s 14 — principles of local government: open, transparent, efficient and effective use of resources; accountability; and contribution to the well-being of communities.
- Government Procurement Rules — fair and transparent process, published evaluation criteria, public value. Rule 22 governs panels (open primary process; competitive secondary procurement or documented direct source). 5th edition (effective late 2025) introduces a mandatory economic-benefit test with a minimum 10% weighting for qualifying procurements.
- Construction Contracts Act 2002 and NZS 3910:2023 / 3916 — contractual backbone once awarded; clearer design-development versus variation rules.
- Privacy Act 2020 and LGOIMA — data handling, commercial sensitivity balanced against transparency of evaluation outcomes.
3.2 Council instruments
- Auckland Council Group Procurement Policy and Sustainable Procurement Framework.
- Group Procurement Strategy (2025/26) — five principles: be clear about what is needed; encourage strong competition; choose solutions that last; hold suppliers to account; use spending for wider benefits. Targets include 10% local/diverse and 5% Māori spend.
- Better Value Projects ten principles — early problem definition and robust value assessment, rightsizing, standard designs, maximum prices, past supplier performance, local suppliers, streamlining, careful consultation management, independent assessment, continuous value assessment. These are being embedded in procurement-plan templates, Sentient, health checks and Ready Contracts.
- Construction Procurement Guidelines (MBIE) — for works ≥ $9 million: matching capability to complexity, whole-of-life evaluation, stakeholder engagement.
All stages below sit inside existing delegations, procurement plans, and approval pathways. No legislative change is required.
4. End-to-End Process: From Proposal to Delivery
4.1 Stage 1 — Proposal / Problem Definition and Business Case
Objective: Define the problem, test alternatives, and set a maximum price or target cost before any supplier is preferred.
- Identify the problem and outcomes (not the solution). Involve Local Boards and affected communities at this stage.
- Options analysis including non-build or standard-design solutions. Rightsizing is mandatory under Better Value principles.
- Whole-of-life costing and maximum price or cost envelope locked in the business case.
Gate: Independent or peer review of problem definition and value assessment before progression. Projects that fail the gate are stopped or redesigned.
Automation: Sentient project templates capture problem statement, options, max-price, and Local Board engagement status. Health-check checklists auto-flag non-compliance with Better Value principles.
Critique: Most overruns start here. Time pressure and political preference for “doing something” routinely waive gates. Without enforcement, later multi-criteria scoring merely optimises a flawed brief.
4.2 Stage 2 — Pre-design, Options Refinement and Value Assessment
Objective: Achieve minimum design maturity and constructability input before market approach.
- Concept and preliminary design to a defined maturity level (e.g., sufficient for accurate costing and risk identification).
- Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) or design workshops for complex works — already demonstrated on Healthy Waters projects with maximum cost targets.
- Standard designs applied wherever possible. Bespoke only with documented justification.
- Risk register and constructability review completed; predicted RFI volume and residual design risk quantified.
Automation: Sentient design-stage gates and risk logs feed a pre-design accuracy score (maturity %, workshops held, open risks). This score is auto-pulled into later evaluation packs.
Critique: Awarding on incomplete drawings transfers risk poorly and inflates prices. ECI without clear design-responsibility matrices under NZS 3910:2023 simply creates disputes later.
4.3 Stage 3 — Procurement Planning
Objective: Document delivery model, approach to market, evaluation methodology, criteria and weightings.
- Select delivery model using complexity tools (MBIE Delivery Environment Complexity Analytic). Traditional for simple works; ECI or design-and-build for complex.
- Approach to market: open competition or competitive secondary procurement from a preferred panel (Rule 22). Direct source only for low-value/urgent with written best-value justification.
- Define weighted-attributes evaluation. Publish criteria and weightings in the RFx.
- Evaluation panel composition, conflict-of-interest process, moderation method (consensus preferred), and two-envelope if price is separated.
- How past performance scores will be used (mandatory under Better Value and Group Strategy).
| Criterion | Indicative Weight | Key Measures |
|---|---|---|
| Budget / cost certainty | 30–40% | Fixed/maximum price, risk allocation, contingency realism, historical variation % |
| Delivery reliability | 20–25% | Track record (ATPACE-style scores), methodology, programme, on-time % |
| Pre-design / constructability | 10–20% | Ability to improve design, identify risks early, reduce RFIs (ECI/D&B) |
| Community engagement & wider outcomes | 10–15% | Local labour/subcontract %, measurable engagement plan, economic benefits (min 10% under 5th ed Rules where applicable) |
| Other (H&S, sustainability, etc.) | Remainder / pass-fail | Mandatory preconditions plus residual weighted items |
Critique: Weightings set by the project team can be gamed. Community criteria remain soft unless converted to hard metrics and contract KPIs. Sensitivity analysis on weights is essential.
4.4 Stage 4 — Market Approach, Response and Evaluation
Objective: Run a fair, documented evaluation using pre-collated data.
- Issue RFx (open or panel secondary) via eTenderBox/GETS with published criteria, weightings and structured response forms.
- Automated evaluation pack generated: supplier historical performance scores, variation history, local-spend metrics, project baseline (max price, design maturity), Better Value compliance status.
- Panel members score independently against anchored scales, then moderate to consensus. Full records retained.
- Reference checks and due diligence. Price opened only after qualitative scoring if two-envelope used.
- Recommendation report with justification for preferred supplier and any rejected bids.
Automation: Ready Contracts / Sentient / ATPACE / SAP pull structured data into the evaluation matrix or module. Human scores are entered once; weighted totals calculate automatically. AI summarisation of free-text may assist but must not replace human scoring.
Critique: Opaque algorithms or reliance on undisclosed data create challenge risk under the Procurement Rules. The audit trail must be complete.
4.5 Stage 5 — Award and Contract
Objective: Convert scored commitments into enforceable contractual obligations.
- Approval under existing delegations.
- Contract form: NZS 3910:2023 or 3916, incorporating maximum-price or target-cost mechanisms where used, clear design-development vs variation rules, and the scored KPIs (local spend, performance metrics, etc.).
- Performance scoring regime activated from day one (ATPACE-style or Group equivalent).
Critique: Tender promises that are not contractually enforced are worthless. Maximum prices without disciplined variation processes simply migrate overruns into claims.
4.6 Stage 6 — Delivery, Performance Management and Feedback Loop
Objective: Deliver within the envelope and feed actual performance into future evaluations.
- Continuous value assessment and health checks against Better Value principles.
- Regular performance scoring (management, delivery, quality, community KPIs) with supplier acknowledgement and challenge rights.
- Scores automatically write back to the supplier record in Ready Contracts / performance module.
- Poor performers are down-weighted or removed from panels on future secondary procurements. Aggregate data reported to the Revenue, Expenditure and Value Committee.
Critique: Collecting scores that are never used is pure waste. The feedback loop is the highest-value automation and the element most often neglected.
5. Automation Architecture
Collation, not decision-making, is automated. Existing systems are configured rather than replaced.
- Data sources: Sentient (project gates, design maturity, risks, Local Board engagement), Ready Contracts (contracts, supplier records, performance), ATPACE (AT scores), SAP (actuals, variations), SRM Portal (local/diverse spend).
- Standardisation: Mandatory fields and anchored scoring scales for each criterion. Structured digital response forms in eTenderBox.
- Outputs: One-click evaluation pack, auto-calculated weighted scores once human scores entered, performance dashboards, write-back to supplier records.
- Controls: Role-based access, full audit logs, human override, no opaque scoring algorithms.
Staff time is saved primarily by eliminating manual extraction of historical performance, variation rates, and project baseline data. Configuration of Ready Contracts and Sentient is the highest-ROI step.
6. Critical Risks and Failure Modes
- Front-end gates waived under time or political pressure — the root cause of most overruns.
- Weightings gamed to favour a preferred supplier or soft community narratives that cannot be measured.
- Performance scores collected but not used in subsequent evaluations.
- Incomplete evaluation records that cannot survive LGOIMA or challenge.
- Over-reliance on automation for qualitative judgement, creating fairness risk.
- Panel secondary procurement that is not genuinely competitive.
Any of these turns the multi-criteria system into theatre.
7. Recommendations
- Mandate and enforce the Stage 1 and Stage 2 gates for all capital works above a defined threshold. Stop projects that fail.
- Publish standard criteria templates and anchored scoring scales. Require sensitivity testing of weightings in every Procurement Plan.
- Configure Ready Contracts and Sentient to auto-generate evaluation packs and write performance scores back. Do not build a separate system.
- Convert community and economic-benefit criteria into measurable contract KPIs with financial or performance consequences.
- Report aggregate supplier performance and Better Value compliance quarterly to the Revenue, Expenditure and Value Committee.
- Use independent probity advice on higher-value or sensitive awards. Maintain complete evaluation records.
Implementation sits inside the existing Group Procurement Strategy rollout and Better Value embedding programme. The difference between success and failure is enforcement of the gates and the performance feedback loop.
8. Conclusion
A multi-criteria assessment system balancing Delivery, Budget, Community engagement and Pre-design accuracy is lawful, feasible inside Auckland Council’s current processes and systems, and superior to an unconstrained “prefer supplier” model. Automation of data collation is practical and high-value. The legal framework (LGA 2002, Government Procurement Rules, Council policy) already supports it.
The ruthless requirement is execution: enforce the front-end gates, measure what matters, use the scores, and stop pretending soft criteria or unused performance data improve outcomes. Without that discipline the process remains theatre and the overruns continue.
Frequently asked questions
What does the multi-criteria assessment change?
It replaces defaulting to a preferred-supplier panel with a weighted evaluation published in the RFx: budget or cost certainty 30–40 percent, delivery reliability 20–25 percent, pre-design and constructability 10–20 percent, and community and wider outcomes 10–15 percent. Front-end gates for problem definition, maximum price and design maturity must be cleared before the market approach.
Is it compatible with the Government Procurement Rules?
Yes. The report maps the process against the Local Government Act 2002 section 14 principles, the Government Procurement Rules including Rule 22 on panels and the fifth-edition economic-benefit weighting, Auckland Council's Procurement Policy and Group Procurement Strategy, the ten Better Value Projects principles, and NZS 3910:2023 and NZS 3916 conditions of contract.
Does it use AI to score tenders?
No. Existing platforms — Ready Contracts, Sentient, ATPACE-style performance scoring and SAP — are configured to auto-generate evaluation packs and enforce structured response fields. Judgement stays with people, and a complete evaluation record is kept for every award decision so that it can be reconstructed under LGOIMA.
What makes the process fail?
A waived or late front-end gate, soft criteria that cannot be measured at completion, and performance scores collected but never applied. The report's brutal assessment is that anything less than enforced gates, deliberate published weightings, measurable contract KPIs and reuse of performance scores is a slower version of the status quo that continues to produce overruns.
Part of the Multi-Criteria Assessment for Auckland Council Capital Works project. Spot an error? Email info@citybuildersassociation.org How do corrections work?.
Published by City Builders Association Limited (NZBN 9429053649225, company number 9426905). Director and author: Mark Pervan. Checked 23 October 2026.
Membership funds the research and does not buy editorial control or preferential treatment. A conclusion is marked lodged only when the page shows the date, the recipient, and the reference.