18 | NZTA - CLL: Mangamuka Gorge � Virginia Wright Helping to keep critical route open CLL, together with the Whangarei branch of global Geotech engineering consultancy company WSP, took on the job of turning the gorge back into a functioning state highway. T T to page 20 REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Northland construction manager, Tim Hunger, has been with CLL Services and Solutions for the last 20 years, having worked in construction since he was 16, and over those years he has seen the company transition from a landscaping operation with 30 or so staff into a specialist piling company employing around 280 people. “It’s still a family-based company, by which I mean that we look after each other like a family,” says Tim. “Over 75% of the company is owned by the staff. That was all gifted to us from Terry (Donnelly), which was always his plan, to get people along for the journey rather than have one person making the decisions. “There’s a big senior leadership team and that’s run by Terry and another 12 people, and all those decisions from purchases up to where we head with the business are made by the team,” Tim explains. No doubt, that’s one of the reasons they have low staff turnover and have people approaching them looking for positions, and, as Tim says, if they are genuine people they often end up coming to work with them (not for them). Along with the increase in staff has come the transition from a few bobcats, and a couple of diggers and trucks to having increasingly big and complex machinery capable of handling all the modern technology needed for a specialist piling company which is working on some of the country’s most important infrastructure. “We’re the biggest privately owned piling company in the country, and we’ve got the biggest piling fleet with 150-ton drill rigs, and all the diggers and trucks and cranes we need to do the work we do,” says Tim. With offices in Christchurch, Bay of Plenty, and Northland, and a head office in Auckland, that work involves foundations and piling, ground improvement, anchoring, bridge building and concrete works, but the big machinery is mainly used around their piling work, which they do for anything from bridges to skyscrapers. Tim likens it to building house foundations, albeit on a bigger scale. Although the work they did on the Mangamuka Gorge on behalf of NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi wasn’t like building piles to hold up a house, but rather to hold back the thousands of tons of earth that threatened to continue to slip in the wake of Northland’s (and Auckland’s) massive weather event in August 2022. When a metre of rain fell over a month on already sodden ground, it caused around 35 slips through the gorge. . Drill Force New Zealand offers a complete solution to support your drilling and CPT goals, with over 35 purpose built drilling and CPT rigs, backed by our committed professional staff; We have what it Takes To Get The Job Done! Berretta T46, powerful, highly maneuverable drilling rig Tech Drill 150 and 200, Fast set up 4x4 Truck mounted diamond drilling rig. HQ/PQ core with Automatic SPT Ryan Tidswell | 027 837 2030 | ryan@drillforce.co.nz 09 267 9100 | info@drillforce.co.nz www.drillforce.co.nz
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