Rebuilding After Disaster

A Practitioner's Guide to Cost, Procurement and Commercial Management of Reconstruction

When a major disaster strikes, reconstruction breaks the tools that cost and commercial managers rely on.

Benchmarks stop working, the scope stays uncertain for months, every owner wants to start at once, and prices move faster than estimates can follow. The money comes from insurers, public schemes, government grants and owners' own funds, each with its own rules, and much of the cost arises where those channels meet.

Using only the public record, the book looks at five events: the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the 2021 Marshall Fire and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. It covers demand surge, who decides repair scope, repair standards, procurement arranged before the event, delivery models, building a commercial team at speed, and designing dispute resolution in advance. It ends with stakeholder readiness checklists, ten lessons and three templates you can use before the next event.

For quantity surveyors, cost managers, insurers, loss adjusters, public funders, contractors and anyone who will have to rebuild after the next disaster.