Nominations for Refreshed NZPI Awards are Open

Te Kōkiringa Taumata / NZPI’s Board has been working behind the scenes to refresh the annual awards. These awards sit at the core of the Institute’s work, championing the profession and celebrating success in planning. We’d like to share some changes to the award categories and announce that nominations for the 2024 NZPI awards are now open.

Every year NZPI recognise the importance of planning and the ground-breaking work going on to build communities and support our environments in Aotearoa. The NZPI award and scholarship categories reflect best practice in students, emerging planners, researchers, exceptional project teams, and longstanding service. This year the Board has made some changes to the Best Practice awards to recognise the evolution of the planning profession. These new Best Practice categories are: Digital tools, Planning for Inclusive Communities, and Health and Wellbeing and Climate Change.

Opportunities for grants and scholarships span all categories of membership and experience. They are:

• Papa Pounamu Whakatutukitanga Scholarship, proudly supported annually by WSP, this award recognises excellence and attainment by a student planner involved in Māori planning in an environmental framework.
• Reginald Hammond Scholarship, awarded annually to a student entering the final year of study in an NZPI accredited planning degree at the undergraduate or post-graduate level in New Zealand.
• Robert Kennedy Grant is awarded in recognition of excellence in research that achieves a world-class level of success. Success is exemplified by dissemination of a significant body and depth of work, through peer reviewed publications in international journals, or books, of high repute.
• Wallace Ross Graduate Research Grant is awarded to any member(s) of the Institute in recognition of excellence in research that advances planning practice, process and theory.

The five Best Practice Award categories open for nominations are Strategic Planning & Guidance, Climate Change, Community Planning, Digital Tools and Non-Statutory Planning.

The Rodney Davies Project Award recognises innovation and creative excellence in the undertaking and completion of a physical work or development. The award is given to an individual NZPI member or to an organisation/group which includes an NZPI member.

Other annual awards include the Lance Leikis Emerging Planner Award, proudly sponsored by Boffa Miskell, the John Mawson Award, and the Alfred O. Glasse Award.

These annual awards will be presented at the Welcome Function at NZPI conference on March 20th.

The Nancy Northcroft Planning Practice Award is NZPI's supreme practice award, selected from the winners of the best practice categories and the Project Award. This is NZPI’s supreme practice award and is presented and celebrated on March 22nd at the Gala Dinner at #NZPIC24.

Nominations for the 2024 NZPI Awards and Scholarships are now open. If you have a project from 2023 that’s innovative and thought leading, no matter how small or large, or you’d like to nominate a student or planning practitioner for one of our scholarships, then please take the opportunity to celebrate and share your work and learnings throughout the planning profession by submitting a nomination to the 2024 awards.

Registering a nomination is easy. Just fill in the relevant form and return with requested attachments by email to Vanessa White before 4pm, 19 January 2024.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NZPI AWARD CATEGORIES AND TO DOWNLOAD A NOMINATION FORM

Please note there will be no acceptance of late nominations.