Strategy & performance
Lepidopterist Robert Hoare with moths in the New Zealand Arthropod Collection
Our role is to undertake research, science and technology (RS&T) to protect and enhance the economic, societal and intrinsic value of New Zealand land environments. This includes maintaining national capability in relevant areas of science while meeting the financial targets set by our Government shareholders.
Our corporate strategy aligns with the Government’s priorities for economic growth, productivity gains, and Māori economic development. Much of our work is ‘public good’ and supports the development of policy and better practices for managing land–based natural resources. Our principal non–FRST customers are MAF, DOC, AHB, MfE, MED and local government, with an increasing amount of our work supporting Māori groups. We regularly meet with our customers, across strategic and operational levels, to deepen relationships and maximise the value of our work.
The primary sector, industry and land developers are under increasing market and public pressure to enhance their environmental performance. Good stewardship of soil, land, water and biodiversity resources is essential to land–users’ ability to increase production, retain their social ‘licence–to–operate’ and continue market access. Businesses that respond proactively to climate change issues are creating a market advantage that leads to greater export success. Our contribution is to deliver new environmental knowledge, technologies and services that will support the attainment of those goals while also improving the reputation and profitability of business. Our strategy is to grow the proportion of our business focused on improving sustainability in the private sector through the provision of contract research and the commercialisation of environmental technologies.
Information technology continues to develop rapidly. Therefore we are seeking to maximise its use in making knowledge more accessible to users, and to increase our international connectedness with world–leading science groups. Global change also brings uncertainty to our stakeholders, and our strategy includes using foresight and scenarios to shape the direction of our research and provide a service to assist our customers with strategy development.
We are continuing to challenge ourselves to provide leadership in organisational sustainability and reporting. To achieve the targets in our five–year plan, we are adopting and refining management and technological approaches that are also of high potential benefit to a wide range of organisations.
Priorities for 2008/09
Partnerships
We said we would:
- Strengthen strategic partnerships with key customers in central and local government, and with other research providers.
- Build a strong organisational profile with stakeholders.
Increase the proportion of revenue from nongovernment customers through high–quality independent professional advice and services.
How we performed:
- Of our top clients, 81% of participants in an external survey rated us ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ at working effectively with them.
- We won 36 of 39 contract proposals submitted to MAF under its Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change agenda.
- A total of 87 customer staff were on our advisory groups, and 41 of our staff held 67 positions on stakeholder advisory groups.
- We had 185 collaborative research projects and proposals with end–users and stakeholders.
- Our top clients contracted $8.5m of research services, an increase of 78% from the previous year.
- Private sector customers contracted $6.5m of research services.
Operational sustainability
We said we would:
- Enhance our performance in managing our operational sustainability (corporate social responsibility).
How we performed:
- We developed an extensive new sustainability section on our website. This enables us to report more comprehensively, put our operational activities into context with our scientifi c research, and provide links to relevant research. We used the GRI’s G3 framework to guide our reporting, with GRI confi rming our reporting was at the A application level.
- We retained ISO14001 certifi cation and our Tertiary Level status under ACC’s Workplace Safety Management Practices.
- We reduced avoidable waste to landfill by a further 25% per FTE, surpassing our target of a 10% reduction.
- We purchased enough credits through the carboNZeroCert™ programme to offset our unavoidable emissions from Landcare Research and our subsidiary Sirtrack to retain our carbon–neutral status.
- We contracted Telarc SAI to conduct an audit of our processes for measuring greenhouse gas emissions from our operational activities. Their report noted: ‘A very pleasing feature of this verification audit was the organisation’s strong focus on sustainability and improvement relating to its environmental effects.’
Invest to grow
We said we would:
- Use internal investment to stimulate innovation in environmental technologies, and the growth of the carboNZero programme and our subsidiary Sirtrack.
- Invest in science capabilities for emerging fields of national significance.
How we performed:
- Sirtrack had a record year for sales of hi–tech products, and received two business export awards.
- Our carboNZero programme showed a 76% growth in revenue and a 25% growth in client numbers, and won several business awards.
- We launched CEMARS™ (Certified Emissions Measurement and Reduction Scheme) for organisations wanting to cut greenhouse gas emissions without necessarily becoming carbon neutral.
- Enviro–Mark®NZ programme increased membership by 17%.
- EcoGene™ and Invasive Species International were launched, with EcoGene outstripping performance targets.
- We have 10 prototype environmental technologies and services under development, 12 in developmental stages, and another 6 undergoing commercial testing. Three have patent protection.
- Capability Fund investment supported skill development and emergent areas including pest control technologies, information visualisation and web–delivery, lifecycle design in manufacturing, sustainable consumption, future weed identification, and post–2012 climate change scenarios.
Collaboration
We said we would:
- Build international links with world–leaders to access future thinking and complementary capability.
- Strengthen collaboration with other CRIs and increase the value of co–location with New Zealand universities.
How we performed:
- Staff were invited to present 19 keynote or plenary addresses to overseas meetings, with costs fully or partially reimbursed.
- Of the 232 conference presentations by our staff, 104 were overseas. A number of the New Zealand based conferences were international meetings.
- Staff were also invited to participate in 50 overseas technical meetings and workshops.
- Sixty of our staff held 102 advisory positions on national and international advisory groups.
- Forty–six staff held 88 positions with editorial boards of scientific journals; of which 73 were journals published overseas.
- We relocated our Wellington office to share premises with Scion and with Science New Zealand. More than 100 staff from other agencies are co–located with us in shared premises. In addition, our Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Lincoln and Dunedin sites are located on or very close to university campuses.
- Most of our research programmes have some degree of collaboration with overseas colleagues. This year, our staff were involved in collaborative proposals and projects with 185 stakeholders and end–users. In addition, we also collaborated on work with other researchers in CRIs (68 projects), New Zealand universities (74) and with individuals or agencies overseas (44).
Organisational Development
We said we would:
- Apply workforce planning and leadership development to address increased competition for talent and workload/life concerns.
- Develop e–technology systems that enhance the productivity of support services, manage risk and lower compliance costs.
How we performed:
- Direct expenditure on training courses and study grants was $563,000 (2.2% of salary costs). In addition, $655,000 of Capability Funds was invested in Fellowships and postgraduate study.
- We commenced an in–house year–long leadership development programme. Feedback from the first cohort of 14 participants has been positive.
- We hosted 14 postdoctoral researchers.
- Our development team delivered a number of new intranet–based ‘tools’ and systems following extensive consultation with staff.
More detail of our performance can be found in Part 2 of our Annual Report. We also report comprehensively on our performance on the sustainability pages of our website www.landcareresearch.co.nz/sustainability