Tom O’Neill

As a Consultant at Xyst, I deliver expertise in Level 3 Playground Safety Inspections (ensuring compliance to NZS 5828:2015), project management, and asset management, alongside planning, research, and service delivery for Councils and community organisations. I often work closely with local communities and key stakeholders to gain meaningful input and reflect their perspectives in the […]

Jenn Benden

As a Director, my focus at Xyst is across parks and recreation consulting, business development, managing staff, and strategic direction. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, have lived and worked in Australia, and now live in New Zealand. My specialist areas are strategic planning for parks, sport and community facilities, as well as project management […]

Alison Rawley

My key responsibility is project management of the Yardstick suite of benchmarking tools. This involves regular updates to the online tools on the Yardstick website, development of new survey and benchmark projects for clients, technical support, data analysis and reporting. It also involves liaison with partner industry organisations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand and […]

Elise Young

I am passionate about our sector and making a difference. I always produce work to the best of my ability and take the client on the journey with me. I like to positively challenge thinking and the way things have always been done to continually seek better solutions. My role involves working with a variety […]

Dafydd Pettigrew

As a consultant, I have been involved with a mixture of parks planning, asset management, capital works delivery and programme management projects for councils, charitable trusts and Maori trusts. My role often requires a high degree of consultation and engagement with the public, key stakeholders and mana whenua. In any project, I work with people […]

Paul Wilson

My primary role is to manage the team at Xyst’s Napier office and to assist our other consultants to bring innovative, best practice solutions for our clients. I have deep knowledge across the key areas of Xyst’s services and share it for our collective benefit. I’m the go-to guy for technical issues and problem solving. I […]

Jane Wright

As a Senior Consultant with Xyst, I help local government and other agencies plan and deliver parks and recreation benefits for their local communities. This involves supporting clients with a broad range of knowledge and practical skills associated with open spaces and facilities. In any project, I aim to build strong relationships that help to […]

Open Space Embellishment Costing

Independant Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (NSW)

Developed an open space hierarchy and typical development level of service description on which to base cost estimates for development contributions evaluation. Developed cost estimates based on benchmarking valuation information and prepared worked examples to provide a range of typical development costs for each park type.

Charlotte Blakey

Charlotte Blakey

I am responsible for working on a wide range of consultancy projects with local authority clients. I have a wide range of experience from procurement and contract management, to developing tree inventories and tree management planning. You can contact me for help with Asset management – GIS mapping and data collection Tree assessments – condition, […]

Open Space Level of Service Review

Redland City Council - LOS Review

The outputs included: Review current Open Space category hierarchy and identify options for improvements Performance assessment of a range of parks across the municipality Undertake a user survey of a range of parks across the municipality Preparation of development levels of service for each of the Open Space Recreation Park categories (T1 – T5) including […]

Parks Service Unit Operational Review

Xyst worked closely with the unit to better understand the current state of their functions and services, and the effectiveness and efficiency of the current team resourced to deliver them. Also we worked to better understand the outputs and outcomes which Council and the community require from Council’s parks, open spaces and public facilities, and […]

Cemetery Concept Plans and Capacity Analysis

Xyst undertook site analysis with key staff, an assessment of the statutory framework, a two-stage public engagement process, mana whenua engagement, and community board and council engagement in order to understand the cemetery network constraints and opportunities and to prepare and test concept plans and network priorities. Once completed, we analysed the plans to provide […]

Eastern Porirua Reserves Spatial Plan

Eastern Porirua is going through a period of change as Kāinga Ora Homes and Communities (Kāinga Ora) redevelops large areas of its land to meet housing demand and provide better community services to support growth. As part of this redevelopment the existing reserve network is being examined to determine whether it is fit for purpose […]

Hastings Library Strategy Consultation

Xyst undertook a multi-method consultation approach to reach all demographics of the Hastings community (including hard to reach demographics such as non-library users, the vulnerable, the rural community and youth). Opportunities were provided online, offline and face-to-face to provide equal opportunity. Consultation was undertaken over a 2-month period with 1,500 different voices heard.