Do we need Elon Musk to help fix our planning systems?

I know the mention of Elon Musk can be triggering for some. Mention of planning laws is equally triggering, but for a great many more people. You will see the connection soon.

My first formal encounter with “planning law reform” was in the mid 1990s, when as a fairly new Executive Director of the then newly named Property Council, the case for planning reform was passionately promoted by the industry. Planning laws were - it was argued - overly complex, time consuming, inconsistent and riddled with costly process. Or so we thought. Oh, to have those bad old days back again.

The Government of the day introduced a reform package in what was known as the “Planning, Environment and Development Assessment Bill” (PEDA). We joked we should call it ‘the PEDA-file.’ The name was swiftly and wisely changed, into what would later become the Integrated Planning Act (1997).

Proponents hailed IPA as something of a revolution. It introduced what was billed as an ‘Integrated Development Assessment System’ (IDAS) which promised a more coordinated approach to assessing and approving development applications. It also introduced a less prescriptive form of land use control, via a system of performance-based planning – the idea being that how a project performs against outcomes of sustainability, economic and community criteria is more important that prescribing what can and cannot be built on a particular piece of land. Environmental sustainability was also heralded as a key objective of the act.

The IPA promise of greater efficiency and transparency proved an abject fail, if the burgeoning number of planning law specialists, town planners and associated experts is anything to go by. Local governments resisted interference in their plan making and adjudication powers, while applicants were faced with a confusing labyrinth of overlapping assessment pathways under different regulations. Ambiguity led to community anger, and the government of the day played up to it by labelling all developers as ‘greedy’ for trying to do what the original act had promised.

It kept us busy at the PCA. The Bligh Government, under pressure to resolve the widespread dissent, worked up a new regulatory framework, initially under Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Paul Lucas, then Stirling Hinchliffe who took over as Planning Minister in early 2009. The new ‘Sustainable Planning Act’ was passed in late 2009. I recall Minister Hinchliffe joking to me that a core KPI of his for the new Act was that the word ‘sustainable’ must appear on every page at least once. I later learned he wasn’t really joking. While the industry continued to be blasted as “greedy developers” the Act was very much positioned for political appeal to the growing environmental movement. Planning was becoming a political plaything.

Once again, any promise of regulatory improvement was a fail. Complexity, confusion, process-led assessments which took extraordinarily long times to consider, and inconsistent outcomes flourished under the SPA. More planning lawyers, town planners, and related experts were now needed to answer the simple question: “what can I do with this piece of land?”

And so once more it was necessary revisit the regulatory framework, with the noble aims of simplicity and transparency front and centre. And with that, some years more of industry advocacy later, the Planning Act (2016) was passed.

Are we any better off now than we were back in 1997? In a paper I was commissioned to produce for the Australian Institute for Progress titled “FASTER, BETTER, MORE - Why it takes so long and costs so much to deliver the housing we need – and what we can do about it” I observed that:

The increase in complexity is illustrated by the length of many state planning regulations: for example, the Local Government (Planning and Environment) Act of 1990 was 120 pages in length. The latest incarnation – the Planning Act 2016 – is 430 pages plus 526 pages of planning regulations, plus 54 pages of Rules under the Act, 86 pages of Minister’s Guidelines and Rules and over 200 pages in State Development Assessment provisions. Further, there has been exponential growth in local government planning schemes and infrastructure agreements which can run to thousands of pages.

Lawyers I spoke with told me they didn’t really know how many pages of rules and regulations were now in force – just that it would be so many as to be impossible to count.

To deal with this level of complexity, the Planning Institute of Australia is now calling for more town planners. True, the complexity is such that what could once be performed by a trained administrative officer now requires a team of university-trained Town Planners. But rather than asking for more town planners, could it make more sense to call for less planning red tape? After all, the idea of a university educated Town Planner with a HECs debt now devoting their mind to what are often mindless administrative processes seems a terrible waste of human intelligence.

According to Jonathan O’Brien - founding editor-in-chief of Inflection Points - this increasing complexity has eroded the productivity of planners over time:

So, where to next? I cannot find a single person in the industry – either within government or private sector – who considers our current framework to be efficient, productive and clearly understood by industry and the community. Not a single one. Most will say it’s inferior to what we had 30 years ago. Little wonder supply of even the simplest thing you can do (build a house) is so choked.

Enter Elon Musk. The guy is frankly quite weird, but you can’t deny his achievements. An outstanding example of that is how he has driven simplification of rocket engines used for his Space X rockets. The original Raptor 1 engine from 2019 resembles a NASA style tangle of pipes and process that produced 185 metric tonnes of thrust. The latest version is lighter, simpler and will produce over 300 tonnes of thrust. This evolution took just 6 years.

NASA to some extent reminds me of an organisation that resembles our planning laws – they changed little over time, resisted innovation and meaningful reform, created a burgeoning bureaucracy with their own inter-generational career paths, and cost increasingly more to operate.  Along comes Elon Musk, who rethinks every process and challenges every article of rocket science faith, and whose Space X is now leading NASA in many respects. The Raptor engines are a visual symbol of how that looks in real life.

 

Which means it (planning law reform) is possible. But it will not happen by applying the ‘business as usual’ thought processes, or by inviting ‘the usual suspects’ to the reform table. The processes and people that created the problems we have today are not the people to reform them.

Musk's 5 Step Algorithm to Cut Internal Bureaucracy (from Corporate Rebels.com)

1. Question every requirement

Before changing anything in your processes, the first step of Musk's algorithm is to create clarity about every requirement that exists today.

That clarity can be made by attaching a person—and a name—to every requirement. That is, each requirement should come with the name of the person who made that requirement.

Musk: "You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from 'the legal department' or 'the safety department.' You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement."

Once that clarity is achieved—that is, when every requirement has the person's name attached—then you can start questioning whether these requirements make sense. No matter how smart or how 'powerful' that person is.

Musk: "Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb."

2. Delete any part of the process you can

The second step of Musk's algorithm is all about subtraction—a widely undervalued habit in management. In this case, it is all about deleting any part of the process you can.

In fact, it is all about deleting just a bit more than you feel comfortable with.

Musk: "You may have to add [parts or processes] back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough."

3. Simplify and optimize

Only when you have walked through steps one and two can you start by simplifying and optimizing (parts of) your processes.

This particular order of steps protects you from doing unnecessary work—it keeps you from improving (parts of processes) that you do not need in the end.

Musk: "A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist."

4. Accelerate cycle time

The fourth step of Musk's algorithm is all about speed. It is about finding ways to speed up your bureaucratic processes.

"Every process can be speeded up," says Musk. "But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted."

5. Automate

The fifth and last step of Musk's algorithm involves automation. Now that you have clarity about your processes and have deleted any unnecessary parts to speed up your bureaucratic processes, it is time to start looking for what you can potentially automate.

Musk: "[Automate] comes last. The big mistake in [my factories] was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out."