Company: Novo Group

Location: Christchurch, New Zealand

Team Size: ~20 planners

Focus Area: Resource consents and planning reports across the greater Christchurch area

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The Challenge: Striving for Consistency and Efficiency

As Novo Group grew, so did the complexity of delivering consistent, high-quality planning assessments. With staff referencing different past reports and manually adapting Word templates, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and professionalism across their team became more difficult.

 

“It relied heavily on the individual in terms of what their approach was,” said Jeremy (Director + Senior Planner).

“That came with risks of errors, oversights or inconsistency.”

 

Novo planners needed a way to reduce time spent on low-value tasks like formatting and data entry, and instead, focus their expertise on high-value analysis.

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The Turning Point: Discovering Rico

When evaluating potential solutions, the team realised that conventional template tools like Microsoft Word weren’t cutting it. Rico, built specifically for planners, stood out as a simple, targeted solution that addressed their unique workflow needs without overcomplicating things.

 

“Rico was targeted at planners, and you guys spoke our language,” Andrew (Principal Planner) explained.

“It was the right tool at the right time,” added Rhys (Director + Traffic Engineer/Planner).

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Rolling Out Rico: A Learning Curve Worth Climbing

Learning Rico was an investment, but a worthwhile one. Because its structure mirrored how planners already approached report writing, many on the team found they could pick it up quickly.

 

“If you build your knowledge in increments, it’s fine. Anyone who uses Office software regularly should easily pick it up,” said Andrew.

“After 4–5 projects I was reasonably confident,” Jeremy added.

“The more you use it, the better it gets,” Rhys added. “It takes time—but so does understanding a district plan!”

 

Feedback also played a key role in shaping Rico's evolution.

 

“Rico has grown a lot from when we first started—often in response to feedback from us and other users,” Jeremy noted. 

“I think someone coming to Rico now would hit the ground running with a lot of the improvements that have been made over the past ~2 years we’ve been using it.”

 

And the support from the Rico team helped everything click into place.

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“Hats off to the team at Rico who have been extremely responsive to questions and queries,” said Rhys.

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The Transformation: A More Consistent, Scalable Workflow

With Rico, Novo moved from a patchwork of templates and past reports to a centralised, structured system for assessments. The impact was immediate:

• Consistency and accuracy improved across teams, especially helpful for newer staff.

• Formatting and presentation became uniform and professional.

• Time savings freed up planners to focus more on complex analysis instead of admin.

 

“It has inherently removed the time wastage associated with wrestling with different templates, and provided a database of examples,” said Andrew.

“We now spend a far smaller proportion of total time on lower-value tasks such as report set up, standardised data entry, and formatting,” added Jeremy.

 

Even complex applications—such as notified consents—could be tackled with the same streamlined process Rico provided for simpler residential ones.

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The Results: Quality, Speed, and Confidence

While the exact time savings vary, the team is unanimous—Rico reduces low-value admin work and shifts effort to where it counts.

 

“We now spend a far smaller proportion of total time on report setup, standardised data entry and formatting,” Jeremy said.

“That time can instead be spent on assessment, where it actually counts.”

 

“As we get into it, I think it could save 40%,” said Rhys.

 

“It’s honestly hard to remember how long things used to take with Word. I’d say Rico saves at least one hour per project on smaller jobs, and potentially significantly more on larger jobs with complex rules and provisions assessments” said Andrew.

 

For newer staff, Rico became a training tool as much as a workflow solution—giving them the structure they needed from day one.

 

“For less experienced staff, it has definitely helped with quality and consistency of outputs,” Jeremy explained.

“They have structure and format sorted, plus templated responses to draw on.”

 

And for senior staff?

 

“It’s improved the consistency of presentation across the board,” said Jeremy.

“The outputs look better—more professional,” Rhys added.

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Looking Ahead: Scaling Rico’s Impact

Novo Group sees potential for Rico to go even further—supporting more document types, expanding AI-driven features, and making compliance workflows more intuitive.

 

“Plenty of ideas—just not enough time to progress them all!” Jeremy said, summing up the potential to build from Rico’s current platform.

 

Despite these ideas, the team is aligned on one point: Rico is now an essential part of their toolkit.

 

“Yes, we’d recommend it,” said Jeremy. “It will improve report consistency and quality, in terms of content, format and presentation.”

“This allows standardisation of reports at the very least,” Andrew added.