Pre-lodgement is the most under-managed phase of a Fast-track application. The substantive package gets all the attention, but every information request, every clarification round and most of the conditions negotiation traces back to issues raised — or missed — in the 12 to 16 weeks before lodgement.
Here is the playbook we run.
Week 1–2 — stakeholder map
Build a single stakeholder list across DOC, EPA, regional and territorial councils, iwi authorities, hapū, NZTA, Heritage NZ, KiwiRail (where rail-adjacent), Transpower (where grid-connected), and adjacent landowners. Map every named contact, every channel, every prior interaction the project has had. The list becomes the authoritative roster — anyone added later goes through one inbox.
Week 2–4 — issues log
Open one shared issues log. Every stakeholder is referenced. Every issue raised — in any forum, by any party — gets logged with: date, source, plain-English description, specialist owner, status, target resolution date. No issue lives only in someone’s head.
Week 3–6 — iwi and hapū engagement
The single most common failure pattern is treating cultural impact assessment as a workstream to be commissioned after the technical package is mostly done. Start in week three. Identify the right iwi authority and hapū for the project area. Listen. Offer a clear scope and timeframe. Most iwi-led assessments take 12 to 16 weeks of their own — sequence accordingly.
Week 4–8 — agency pre-lodgement meetings
Schedule structured meetings with DOC, EPA, the regional council and the relevant territorial authority. Bring a one-page project description, a draft workstream plan, and three to five specific questions per agency. Take minutes. Issue summary to the agency within 48 hours for sign-off. The minutes become evidence at panel stage.
Week 8–12 — issue routing and gap-finding
By week eight, the issues log should have 40 to 80 entries. Each one routed to a specialist with a date. Two patterns emerge: issues raised by multiple stakeholders (these need a coordinated answer in the substantive package) and issues raised by nobody (these are usually risks the project has not yet surfaced — flag them).
Week 12–16 — pre-lodgement gate
Two weeks before substantive lodgement, run a pre-lodgement gate review. For every open issue: is it resolved, deferred to information request stage, or accepted as a residual risk? Anything not in one of those three buckets is a lodgement blocker.
What this prevents
Properly run pre-lodgement engagement prevents three failure modes: late information requests on issues that were knowable before lodgement, conditions surprises in the final weeks, and political-legitimacy collapses where a stakeholder claims they were never consulted. None of those failures are dramatic to fix — but each one costs weeks of timeline and tens of thousands of dollars in specialist time.
The discipline is unglamorous. It also wins.