The 2026 ACE Awards herald a new chapter for consulting and engineering in Aotearoa New Zealand – one defined by agility, creativity and excellence.
Refreshed for 2026, the awards celebrate the delivery of game-changing consulting services by ACE member firms that create real value for clients and communities. This year’s entries show a sector thinking differently, pushing boundaries and telling a richer story about the impact of great consulting.
Ahead of the winners’ reveal on 5 November at the ACE Awards Gala in Auckland, we speak with ACE Awards Convenor of Judges (for firm awards) David Bridges about the calibre of this year’s entries, the ambition behind the refreshed programme, and why the 2026 finalists offer powerful examples of consulting at its best.
At the heart of the 2026 ACE Awards refresh are three core words: agility, creativity and excellence. Together, they speak to what great consulting looks like in a fast-moving world. Agility is the ability to respond with courage and clarity in a changing environment. Creativity involves generating novel, functional, and economically viable solutions to complex technical challenges within real-world constraints. Excellence is no longer only about technical achievement; it is about applying wisdom, judgement and professional leadership.
For David, who helped lead the awards refresh, this shift is exciting because it moves the conversation beyond “bricks and mortar” into the value consultants create. With the increasing commoditisation of knowledge, great consulting is distinguished by how this knowledge is interpreted, applied and elevated to make a difference. “The behaviours produce the great outcomes,” he says, “and the evidence is in the project.”
Entry numbers “staggering”
ACE member firms’ response to this year’s call for expressions of interest for the awards shows the sector is ready for that conversation, says David. “The changes have been extremely well received. We had 104 expressions of interest, which is staggering, with 41 shortlisted for full submission.”
Entries did not fall evenly across all the categories – collaboration, impact, innovation, relationships, sustainability and value – providing useful learning about where further understanding is needed, and ACE will continue working with members to clarify what each award means, where the distinctions sit, and how firms can recognise the excellence already embedded in their work.
Some of this year’s entries remained strongly project-centric or clung to old assumptions when talking about value, innovation and collaboration. Others fully embraced the paradigm shift to showcase their contribution.
Value, for example, is not simply the lowest cost. It is about using available resources to create the greatest benefit for clients and the wider society, which David says is “a real shift in attitude”.
Innovation also need not be “new and whizzbang”. It can be the smart integration of existing tools, systems and thinking in a way that unlocks better outcomes. “It’s a very subtle change but one in which we need to engage our communities so that they truly understand how we can make a difference.”
Collaboration, too, must go beyond business-as-usual (BAU) relationships and demonstrate how people, clients or communities have genuinely been brought into the work.
Encouragingly, this year’s finalists suggest the refreshed awards are already prompting firms to look differently at what they do. There are entries that celebrate the “little lightbulb moments” – a process change, shift in delivery, wellbeing improvement or a better way of working that creates a step change in outcome. These stories matter because they show that impact is not always about scale; sometimes it is about insight, courage and practical change.
Judging panel
A core strength of the awards is its moderation process, and the increased diversity of experience on this year’s judging panel, which was refreshed alongside the awards, bringing together experienced awards judges with new voices from across the membership and beyond the consulting sector. David says this additional external lens helped challenge any inward-looking assumptions with judges actively testing what elevated an entry beyond BAU.
This judging rigour also creates space for recognising consultancies of different sizes and specialties – not just those delivering large, visible projects, but those demonstrating exceptional judgement, agility, relationships, sustainability, innovation and value in ways others can learn from.
“What excites me is the robustness of what we’re trying to do. It’s a pretty powerful process. Consultants are no longer working just for the client; we have a wider societal awareness. This year’s overall winner tells me that everyone has become very focused around what we’re trying to achieve and is excited by it.”
ACE Awards help consultants remain relevant
The refreshed awards offer members an opportunity to reflect on what makes their work relevant, distinctive and valuable in a fast-changing environment. David emphasises the importance of consultants maintaining relevance, saying the sector must keep moving and showcasing how it adds value and why that value matters to avoid being misunderstood or overlooked.
The awards also create exemplars for others to aspire to, helping the whole sector better understand what great consulting looks like in practice.
The 2026 ACE Awards finalists show a sector in transition – curious, ambitious and beginning to tell a richer story about its value. For David, the real excitement is that many of the entries demonstrate a shift in approach to what great consulting looks like. “The lightbulb moment,” he says, “is the fact that we’ve focused on what is elevating consulting and what is making the difference.”
See you at the 2026 ACE Awards Gala, sponsored by Beca
5 NOVEMBER // Shed 10, Auckland // 5.30pm