An award-winning Aotearoa methodology that draws on enduring Indigenous knowledge to improve infrastructure assessment, investment and asset decisions.
Infrastructure organisations worldwide face a persistent challenge: carrying Indigenous knowledge, rights and priorities beyond impact assessment into infrastructure investment and asset decisions. This presentation introduces Kaupapa Māori Asset Management, an Indigenous-led methodology developed in Aotearoa New Zealand to address that gap.
Applied across eight Activity Management Plans and further developed through wastewater planning, the methodology received WSP’s global Most Impactful Project Award at the GTEC Awards in Toronto and the 2024 Te Kōmata o Te Rangi Supreme Asset Management Excellence Award. It brings mātauranga Māori, mana whenua priorities and technical evidence into one transparent, traceable process informing outcomes, risk, criticality, option assessment, lifecycle planning, investment and monitoring.
The presentation shares the methodology and lessons from practice, including clear governance, agreed outcomes, visible trade-offs and enduring relationships with Indigenous rights-holders. It shows how the approach can enable earlier decisions, reduce duplication and redesign, and strengthen accountability from assessment through delivery, operation and renewal.
Grounded in Te Ao Māori, the methodology is not a model to transplant. Participants will gain practical principles that can be adapted with Indigenous rights-holders to local cultures, laws and infrastructure systems. The approach embodies ka mua, ka muri: drawing strength from enduring knowledge to move impact assessment from identifying effects toward shaping enduring decisions.
Nathan Capper is WSP New Zealand’s Principal Consultant Māori, an environmental hearings commissioner and governance leader advancing Kaupapa Māori asset management.