24 | New life for old bridge BDX Group had the task, to remodel and re-assemble the historic bridge into a safe pathway for cyclists and pedestrians. BDX Group T T Hugh de Lacy REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT It’s the new pride of Whangarei, the Kamo Shared Path Project on the northern outskirts of the city, and it’s a landmark project for the local multi-faceted steel fabricating and construction company BDX Group. The Kamo Shared Pathway is part of the Whangarei District Council’s network of cycling and walking tracks, and its most spectacular feature is an old but reconstructed 50 metre-long railway bridge that had been hauled up north to Whangarei from where it had been sitting in the railway yard in Taumarunui for a couple of years. The bridge was built around 1902 as part of the Main Trunk Line through the King Country, but became redundant a few years ago during an upgrade. BDX Group had the task, to remodel and re-assemble the historic artefact into a safe pathway for cyclists and pedestrians alongside State Highway One. “The council saw an opportunity in the shape of this old bridge for a unique and unconventional project, and BDX’s job has included refurbishing and re-assembling it, adding a new deck and bespoke hand-rails,” BDX Group Managing Director Hamish Woods says. “It’s been a unique project because even though the bridge is very old we had to employ a lot of new technologies.” It’s just one of the structural steel fabrication projects that BDX Group has completed throughout the North Island after being founded in 2007 in the wake of the sale of Whangarei’s TDC Sawmill, one of the biggest in the country, to listed forester Carter Holt Harvey. Tony Davies-Colley had owned TDC and, with Kevin Ogle who had been the maintenance manager at the sawmill, saw an opportunity to extend their maintenance services to other mills – Carter Holt Harvey itself becoming one of their clients. “It’s been a unique project because even though the bridge is very old we had to employ a lot of new technologies.” From there BDX rapidly expanded into the agri-nutrients and other fields, including the maintenance of abattoirs. Such work inevitably involved a great deal of structural fabrication – it was a core part of providing maintenance at industrial plants. Tony and wife Clare Davies-Coley then began to get involved in developing land that they owned for housing and sub-divisions, and this led to their adding a further division, civil contracting, to the BDX Group. This involved acquiring and maintaining machinery such as diggers and rollers, and that led to the establishment of a third division, heavy transport servicing, after other companies sought out BDX to take care of their own equipment. The company today has 30 staff in the structural steel division, ten in civil contracting and another ten in heavy vehicle maintenance, all working from the Whangarei premises with its 2500m2 workshop. The comprehensiveness of the range of services that BDX Group offers allows it to regard the whole of the North Island as its workplace, despite its being “up north.” “By design we’re a diverse company, so it’s nothing to have staff head off for a couple of months to Wellington or Taranaki: that’s the line of work we’re in,” Hamish says. Fully managed workwear & workplace rental solutions. Proudly Supporting BDX Group 0800 808 820 | www.apparelmaster.co.nz
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