ResilienceResilience on the fly: Christchurch’s SCIRT offers a model for rebuilding after a disaster

By David Killick, Citiscope

Published 15 August 2014

You do not see it, but you certainly know when it is not there: infrastructure, the miles of underground pipes carrying drinking water, stormwater and wastewater, utilities such as gas and electricity, and fiber-optics and communications cables that spread likes veins and arteries under the streets of a city. That calamity hit Christchurch, New Zealand, in a series of earthquakes that devastated the city in 2010 and 2011. The organization created to manage Christchurch’s infrastructure rebuild – it is called SCIRT, for Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team— has a vital role, and it has become something of a global model for how to put the guts of a city back together again quickly and efficiently after a disaster.

You don’t see it, but you certainly know when it’s not there: infrastructure, the miles of underground pipes carrying drinking water, stormwater and wastewater, utilities such as gas and electricity, and fiber-optics and communications cables that spread likes veins and arteries under the streets of a city.

No showers, no cups of tea or coffee, no flushing toilets, no lights, no heating, and no traffic lights — a modern bustling city immediately shuts down. Factor in damaged roads, bridges, and retaining walls above ground, and the situation is dire.

That calamity hit Christchurch, New Zealand, in a series of earthquakes that devastated the city in 2010 and 2011.

Most people here don’t see the extent of repair work going on underground. They just notice roadworks and seemingly millions of orange cones that have sprouted up all over the city. Yet the organization created to manage Christchurch’s infrastructure rebuild has a vital role, and it’s become something of a global model for how to put the guts of a city back together again quickly and efficiently after a disaster.

It’s called SCIRT, which stands forStronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team. It’s a sort of consortium consisting of the local government, two national government agencies, and five civil engineering firms. They’ve teamed up to rebuild the city’s water systems, underground utilities, roadways and other components of its so-called “horizontal infrastructure.” SCIRT is tasked with spending $NZ 3 billion ($2.5 billion U. S.) on more than 650 projects by December 2016. The work is almost halfway done and appears on track to be finished on time.

Just as important, SCIRT’s mission is to rebuild these systems stronger and better able to withstand another quake. That’s sometimes as simple as replacing broken earthenware and concrete pipes with flexible plastic ones.  At a time when many cities face growing threats from natural disasters, SCIRT offers an example for local leaders around the world to learn from.

“What we are creating is a template to create a disaster recovery framework for action,” says Duncan Gibb, SCIRT’s general manager. “The structure that we’ve used here is effectively transferred across from construction, and it can be used in construction anywhere.”