National Business Review

17 April 2009

Application helps keep track of all the complexities.

For many, The Resource Management Act is a beast careering out of control.

Regional sales manager Adrian Bullen told NBR his company’s eponymous online software had its genesis when CS-VUE was approached the Auckland City Council in 2003 to devise a system for tracking and managing consent complaince within the council.  For Auckland software company CS-VUE, it has proved a business opportunity.

The commercial CS-VUE product as it is known today was launched to the market in 2005, delivered to customers over the web on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

The New Zealand Transport Agency, for example, (formerly Transit New Zealand) has become a major CS-VUE customer, using the company’s system to track its compliance involving around 4000 consents issued
around its projects nation-wide, with a total of about 40,000 conditions.  One project alone – the Northern Gateway Toll Road and tunnel north of Orewa -entailed the management of 121 consents with around 2,000 attached conditions.

Mr Bullen said that CS-VUE’s online database appeals to companies that have formerly used a disparate collection of spreadsheets, documents and hard copies in their attempts to wrangle hundreds of environmental consents.

With no direct, specialist competitor, CS-VUE has prospered, racking up 3100% revenue growth over the past three years and helping its parent company, the privately-held Andrew Stewart Holdings (which also houses The Carbon Group) grow 215% over the same period.

Customers now include Winstone and Firth in the Fletcher Group, Mighty River Power, BP and Auckland International Airport.

CS-VUE lets businesses with multiple consents to view everything from the consent application to their conditions. It also reports completed compliance duties and provides reminders to a condition requiring action. And as a SaaS tool – or cloud computing application, to label it with an even trendier definition – CS-VUE lets other companies or regulators view your consent data directly.

What next? The company is aiming to double its revenue over the next 12 months, primarily through expansion across the Tasman.

The company recently signed its second Australian customer, QueenslandWater Infrastructure.  A state-owned company established in 2006, QWI is now in the process of designing and constructing a series of dams and other major water infrastructure projects around the parched state – all of which generate a blizzard of consents.  Australian-based VIP Packaging, the world’s largest maker of plastic and steel packaging is already a customer in Australia.  Australia has no headline environmental consent legislation like the RMA. But its patch work of relevant state and federal laws are, if anything, more fertile ground for CS-VUE, spawning larger paper trails.

Is Mr Bullen worried that the National-led government has already watered down the RMA, with more changes promised?  No, he maintained to NBR. Consents might become easier to come by, and more liberal in their scope, but there will still be just as many of them to track.