MINUTES
WELLINGTON BRANCH
TRAINING AND NETWORKING EVENT
held on
Thursday, 11th April at 3.30pm
at
Kapiti Coast District Council, Totara Room
Attendance:
Building Officials Institute of New Zealand: Henry Cassin, Nicola Hakes, Yolandi Sutton
Holmes Farsight Limited Partnership: Rob Tierney
Kapiti Coast District Council: John Peterson, Michelle Salmon, Katharine Wheeler
Life Member: Richard Toner
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment: Murray Usmar
National Consultants Limited: Natalie Hardy
Palmerston North City Council: Bryan Clark, Chris Henry, Phil Lightbourne
Porirua City Council: George Mason
Wellington City Council: Mark Fitzpatrick, Maggie Kay
What's Up Central District Ltd: Richard Wyn
Apologies:
Building Officials Institute of New Zealand: Nick Hill
National Consultants Limited: Alan Moule
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment: Garry Higham, Richard London
Wellington City Council: Barry Harlen
Fire and Emergency New Zealand: Boyd Atkinson, Hayley Bush, James Firestone, Dominic Hare, Murray Kidd,
Welcome:
Wellington Branch Chairman Wayne Goodfellow opened the meeting, welcoming members, guests and gave a very special welcome to the Central Branch members in attendance.
General Business:
• The BOINZ annual conference will be held 19th-22nd May at the Rotorua Energy Events Centre.
The Senior Building Control Officers' Forum will be held in August Please contact Kim Gottard at 04 473 6005 or events@boinz.org.nz for more information.
• Wayne reminded members to nominate their colleagues and fellow members for the excellence awards.
• The BOINZ Board strategy meeting was held on the BOINZ 52nd anniversary. The new three-part strategy will focus strongly on Training and Education, Membership and Advocacy
• Wayne advised that Richard London has stepped down from the Branch Secretary position and sends his best regards. He has also requested anyone interested in the role to contact him.
• There was general discussion around some Councils not covering the cost of membership. It was agreed that all members should be having discussions with their employers to include membership fees in their contract.
• Some employers may ask "what's in it for me" and it was agreed by all members present that the meetings are vastly valuable and informative, there is always something new to learn, you get out what you put in and all members should be encouraging their colleagues to join and attend.
• Central Branch Chairman Bryan Clarke noted that he has some trouble getting presenters at his meetings and that presenters should be asked to present at multiple branches.
Guest Presentation: Paul Busing - Development Central Team Leader
Paul presented on the Transmission Gully project and the challenges he has faced. Paul is intimately involved in the project and leases with Councils and deals with infrastructure, compliance and ensuring that the project does not affect our environment.
The first plans to construct a connective motorway were put into place in the 1950's. By 1998 Transit NZ had determined the most appropriate route options. Construction officially began in 2014 with a completion date scheduled for 2020.
The route will be 110km total length and will ensure the route between the Wellington Airport to north of Levin will be safe, efficient and reliable for communities to rely on so that they can grow and prosper. This will also give improved access to the Wellington port, CBD and Hospital.
The whole highway consists of 8 separate projects and Paul supervises the Kapiti project which is about 6 kilometres in length.
Some of the challenges that Paul has faced:
• Designing overhead bridges to sink slowly and not fall in the event of an Earthquake. Paul noted that they will be a very safe place to be during an Earthquake as they sink incredibly slowly.
• A crust in the Earth was broken and one of the work sites was flooded with underground water. The solution was to insert drainage layers so water can flow from the hills to the sea.
• The project requires a huge amount of concrete. On "pour days" for the project no other construction business in the area would be able to get any concrete.
• Over the winter some areas would be completely flooded. Each time this happened, the team would have to completely remove all the water.
• So as not to harm the local wildlife they needed divert the Waimeha Stream and relocate the fish. To do this they would fish in the area. They would not be allowed to stop fishing/relocating the fish until they had caught less than 10 percent of the original catch. For example, if they caught 1000 fish on the first catch, they would not be allowed to stop until they had caught less than 100 fish in one catch. Sometimes this could take up to two weeks to achieve.
• From the Makays to Pekepeke they have had to move 2 million cubic meters of dirt
• A 54kg cannon ball was found in the Hauraki Stream. It is believed to be from the 1860's but there is no explination for how it could have gotten there.
• The project has led to becoming one of the biggest archaeological sites in the area.
• It was discovered that Kapiti was originally used as a massive trading post. No one lived there but shellfish "processing areas" were uncovered.
Paul and his team also had to be wary of the noise and vibration damage that can be caused to the residents in the area. Vibration is defined as noise, but buildings can be damaged by large amount of vibration. This led to a lot of inspections of homes in the area undertaken by Paul and his team to make sure they were not damaging homes. For some of the very loud work that had to be completed they would offer to send very close residents to motels.
Paul noted that the best thing that worked was having very open communication with the community. He held a meeting for the community and offered two options to the locals.
They can work as quietly as possible, but it may take them a year to complete to work in the area
or they can be as loud as they need to be, and it would be done before Christmas 2018.
The locals all agreed that being able to have the choice was the best thing and all agreed to let them "go loud" and be done in time for Christmas.
Questions:
Q: What other work did you do with wildlife relocations.
A: Along with the fish relocations they have had to relocate lizards and fern birds. They have also planted over a million plants during the project, but this has led to stoats and ferrets being in the area too.
Q: Once the roading project is complete, what is the estimated drivetime?
A: Unsure at this point but it will be made clearer as the project reaches its conclusion.
Q: How many surveys on damaged houses were performed?
A: More than they had to, but Paul felt that it was better to be safe than sorry.
Wayne then thanked Paul and all members for attending the evening.
Next Branch Training and Networking Event: 19th June at Fire and Emergency NZHQ
BOINZ Wellington Branch Chairman
Wayne Goodfellow
