Why Do We Do Things Twice?

I wrote a resource consent application for a house in a flood plain (the entire suburb is in a flood plain and there is no where else for it to go). We had an engineers report. The report was prepared by a chartered, experience

d, engineer. An engineer who's livelihood rests on her signature. That signature means she

takes liability for the opinions in her report, for the design.

It got reviewed by a graduate engineer. An engineer who had 14 years less experience in the field. He challenged it, our enginee

r had to write a letter and do some further assessment. Then she got a call from the graduate engineer aploligising because he realized she was right the first time. This wasted time and money and added no value to the process.

When a report has been prepared by a suitably qualified, independent, expert (and the applicant has paid a lot for that report),

why does it then get reviewed by someone with lesser qualifications and experience? One application I was involved in, a traffic report got reviewed by three different traffic engineers. All at the applicants expense. They all agreed. Often in hearings each submitter will have an expert to review the initial report.

Planners too duplicate effort. There is a lot of duplication in assessment between an assessment of environmental effects and a planners report. Compliance with rules, relevant objectives and policies identified numerous times by different planners.

As an industry, why do we do things twice or three or four times? If you took your car for a warrant of fitness you wouldnt expect to have to get a second or third opinion on whether it should have passed. Imagine that - "yes, our brake expert says they work fine, you said they work fine but I am just going to get a third brake expert to confirm that they in fact do" Oh, and you have to cover the cost of all of this and you will have to wait a few days while we check everything for the second time. I doubt few people would want to go through that process. So why is it ok in the consents industry?

There is an obvious answer. Risk management. That and a mis trust in the industry. Why is there a concern that "the applicant is paying

a consultant they will just be bought out and do what the applicant says". Why would anyone go to University for four years, work incredibly hard to build a reputation and a career, only to sign their name to something they couldn't professionally support? It makes no sense that anyone would throw away a career for the sake of one fee. Sure you get the bottom 1% of any profession that do things like that but why punish the whole industry. Those people will get pushed out anyway.

All the experts I have worked with push back if a client wants to do something unacceptable in their opinion. Recommendations are made to get good outcomes. The client makes changes relying on their experts.

There are some things that are subjective where a second opinion is valuable. But then there are other things that are pretty black and white like most engineering issues, based on calculations and standards. Noise measurements and acoustic models. In these situations the review process is expensive and adds little value (if any).

So what is the solution? Could we have an accreditation system, where if an engineer is certified by Council or is chartered, their report does not have to be reviewed by a Council engineer? The same could apply to other professions. This would free up Council engineers to focus on those applications that don't have an expert engineering report, or to work on improving engineering standards. Perhaps an accreditation system would remove some of the adversity to risk that exists in the industry. The accreditations already seem to be there but we don't seem to trust them.

What do you think? Is doing the same thing multiple times a problem? Are we focussing too much on process? Is there mistrust in the industry? What are the solutions?