Kāinga Ora scores two wins in Australasian Housing Institute Awards

This is on top of receiving four awards for our developments in the 2021 Property Industry Awards, along with two more awards in Te Kahui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architecture Awards.

The annual AHI awards recognise the mahi of housing professionals and organisations that have made a significant and lasting difference to tenants or service users, the community, colleagues and the wider profession. NZ winners will compete with the equivalent award winners across the Australian states for the overall Australasian awards held in Melbourne in March 2022.

Kāinga Ora took out the two categories of Excellence in Social Housing and Response to COVID-19 at the awards ceremony, which was held virtually on 9 December.

Angela Pearce, Regional Director Counties Manukau, says these wins are testament to the mahi, and innovation shown by our people in what has been a challenging two years in the context of COVID-19, while also implementing our $4 billion 10-year maintenance contract, Te Mahi Ngatahi on 1 July 2020. Te Mahi Ngatahi supports the maintenance and planned upgrades for our existing homes nationwide.

AHI 2021 Excellence in Social Housing

We received the Excellence in Social Housing award for our maintenance programme Te Mahi Ngatahi, led by Doug Spick, Director Maintenance Contracting and Asset Services. Our maintenance programme began in 2017 and delivered significant system and process improvements for Kāinga Ora and maintenance partners to support a vastly improved customer experience that prioritises our customers’ needs, and ensures they are treated with dignity and respect.

Key areas of innovation included the introduction of new processes to improve the customer experience by increasing flexibility around preferred appointment days/times, scheduling appointments within 48 hours, and sending appointment reminders 48 hours and 30 minutes prior to appointments. Customers provided positive feedback around our focus on their wellbeing, and delivery of urgent maintenance work and our new processes.

AHI COVID-19 Response Award

We received this award for the breadth and adaptability of our response to the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the first half of 2020, which encompassed 54,000 welfare calls to our customers, rapid adaptation of maintenance protocols to allow 23,000 urgent home maintenance jobs to be carried out safely. It also recognises the comprehensive support we gave our construction partners in regards to safely shutting down and reopening building sites, as well as helping them remain solvent during lockdown and in the months that followed.