I've been planning flights out of AKL for more than 25 years (which is about as long as they have been digging the place up) and whilst their NOTAMs are VERY detailed and require a lot of reading in conjunction with the airport chart (or at least a briefing by a very well informed dispatacher) they DO contain ALL you need to know about their thousand year MOWP. It is all there and always has been. One thing that AKL do not normally do is publish a notam when the works are suspended however when this happens they normally publish the fact on the ATIS.
I suspect there was just too much information in the WIP NOTAMS for for anybody to fully get the picture in their head. For the last major WIP I was involved in Air Services NZ sent us a powerpoint presentation spelling the whole thing out in small words of few syllables and very well done it was too.
So glad nobody got hurt.
H