Independent economic assessments for resource consents, plan changes, and fast-track applications, for public and private sector clients across New Zealand. Also infrastructure funding, market analysis, and peer review.
Tell us about your projectSee our workWhen a project needs a consent, a plan change, a fast-track approval, or a funding decision, we provide the economic evidence that decision-makers trust and rely on. Three principals with decades of experience. More than $50 billion of projects assessed.
Four services, one standard: economic advice that you can rely on.
Independent economic evidence for resource consents, plan changes, and fast-track applications. This may cover the demand for your proposal, its contribution to supply, and its effects on regional jobs, wages, and GDP.
Funding policies for growth and for the wider costs of running a council or water organisation: who pays, how much, and why. We design the policy, build the model, and help you explain it to councillors, ratepayers, and developers.
Demand, supply, and feasibility for retail centres, housing, business land, tourism, and community facilities. We help you decide what to build, where, and whether it stacks up at all.
A second opinion on someone else's economic assessment, or early advice on your own project, before you commit time and money.
Projects, and the decisions that followed. Open any one for the full story.
Our whole-life development contributions model, built for councils and the new water organisations: charges by funding area, growth debt, policy testing, and a full audit trail, in a single offline application.
Our working paper on why "just enough" development capacity under the NPS-UD is rarely enough in practice, and why enabling more is the better bet for housing affordability. Free to download.
Referral assessment for a 1.7 ha city-centre block with a data centre and zone substation: 80,000 m² of floorspace and an estimated $766m of GDP. Accepted for referral.
Economic benefit assessment for a marine consent under the EEZ Act. At the assessed 2030 project scale, it represented a $1bn investment, sustaining 3,900 jobs and $585m of GDP a year.
Economic assessment for Nova Energy's 300 MW fast-track application near Twizel: power for around 75,000 households, an estimated $85m of regional GDP, and 570 FTE-years of construction work.
Evidence at more than a dozen hearings in one of New Zealand's fastest-growing districts, enabling nearly 8,000 new homes across Rolleston, Lincoln, Prebbleton, and West Melton.
Economic effects assessment and hearing evidence for a plan change enabling 1,400 apartments and 140,000 m² of offices. Approved.
Independent review of the economic case for a fast-track seabed mining application, for the offshore wind developer it would displace. We found the claimed benefits materially overstated. The panel's draft decision proposed decline, and the applicant withdrew in February 2026.
Households paid 80% of transport rates but made 48% of trips. The Council has since revised its transport rating approach.
Levy design under the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act for a $300m-plus sludge facility Wellington could not fund within its debt limits. Levy approved.
Multi-criteria analysis of the runway options and evidence to the hearings panel. Approval granted in 2019.
Economic evidence for the direct referral of the $100m gondola and terminal redevelopment. Consent granted in 2019; the new gondola opened in 2023 and later stages continue.
Economic evidence that helped Eden Park win consent to host concerts as well as sport.
Land supply and demand analysis, centre strategy, and hearing evidence that helped rezone rural land for 4,000 homes, 12,000 residents, and more than 1,000 jobs.
Most projects follow the same five steps. Some skip the last one.
Three principals, one team. One of us leads your project from start to finish.
Principal
Nic leads economic assessments for consents, plan changes, and fast-track applications across housing, retail, energy, and infrastructure, including solar farms, data centres, and highly productive land. Recent work includes Datagrid's hyperscale data centre park at Makarewa and the 100 Halsey Street fast-track referral in Wynyard Quarter. He runs the firm's economic modelling and spatial analysis, and holds degrees in statistics and analytics with first-class honours.
Principal
Danielle's particular expertise is major residential and mixed-use projects. She wrote the firm's standard method for assessing housing need and additionality, and leads its assessments for new communities and urban renewal. Recent work includes fast-track referral assessments for new housing in Selwyn and Tauranga City Council's transport funding review. She has 20 years' experience in New Zealand, Australia, and France, and a multidisciplinary background in finance and architecture.
Managing Director · Principal
Fraser leads the firm's infrastructure funding and council finance work, and its expert evidence at hearings. He reviews reports across all four services. He has advised developers, councils, and the Crown on growth since 2000, giving expert evidence at more than 120 hearings before councils, independent panels, and the courts. He founded Covec in 2001, worked there for 12 years, then founded Insight Economics in 2013. He holds a first-class honours degree in economics.
Some of the organisations we have worked for.
Send us your project details in strict confidence (or we can sign an NDA first). We will review them promptly and arrange a convenient time to discuss next steps.
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