| 67 T T Virginia Wright Adding value for every client The ACE Award recognises that Initia’s client services went above and beyond the technical expertise involved. REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Initia Specialist geotechnical engineering company Initia was established six years ago by four highly experienced, senior geotechnical specialists, and from the start their intention was to differentiate themselves from other big players in the engineering consultancy market. As Nick Speight, one of the four explains. “Larger consultants are generally dealing with multi-disciplinary work, and these days often run more of a corporate model with as many people working internally to keep the business running as they have external client-facing people. We elected to be a specialist service consultancy firm concentrating 100% on the client and on building lasting relationships working with a strong trust-based model.” While they have now grown to having closer to 30 staff working out of their Auckland-based office, they stand firmly by their client focus. “This may sound quite trite but it’s true, we want to be able to demonstrate that we’ve added some level of value to our client’s projects. Whether it’s a more efficient design, or we’ve helped them get through the consenting process more efficiently, or we’ve solved problems during construction and expedited delivery; we know we’ve added value to the project and the client feels the same,” says Nick. Underpinning this goal is their decision to use fixed fees. If the scope changes, the fee may change, but otherwise the fee is fixed at the start of a project, he says. “What that means is we don’t charge time, we don’t run timesheets, and we invoice exactly what was agreed from the start. The intention was to align our business model, or our success, with our clients’ success by doing a really good job, doing it once and doing it right, to put it bluntly.” Their growth is testament to that success with projects including the proposed second runway at Auckland International Airport, Orams Marine Site 18, Mercy Ascot Hospital redevelopment and some of New Zealand’s largest footprint buildings. Repeat clients are the norm, and include Goodman Property, Ockham Residential and the recent successful project for Craig and Graeme Turner’s Sleepyhead Estate for which they won a Silver in the ACE Awards (Acknowledging Commitment and Excellence) in professional engineering and consultancy. Initia was brought in by the Turner brothers to consult as part of their due diligence on a 176- hectare block of land just north of Thames. They wanted to simultaneously build a new manufacturing plant for Sleepyhead and establish a vibrant community, thus reinvigorating an economically deprived region of Waikato. Their own due diligence led to Initia discovering hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of information commissioned by the government in the ’80s with detailed geotechnical information on the land to a depth of 200 metres: a treasure trove that clearly revealed that parts of the site were marginal at best. “It was clear that the Ohinewai site presented a significant level of complexity for the proposed construction. Almost every area of the site included one of the two primary risks: liquefaction or settlement. Some included both, rendering some sections of the site technically impractical to develop,” explains Nick. Knowing how important the Sleepyhead Estate was to the Turners, Nick took care to explain in detail the risks, time frames, costs and ground improvement options, all in plain English. The brothers opted to continue, and the Initia team embarked on the project, which required a series of innovative, evidence-based strategies to achieve the desired outcomes, all with a clear focus on future scenarios while strictly adhering to regulatory, statutory and environmental compliance. The ACE Award recognises that Initia’s client services went above and beyond the technical expertise involved. Equally important is the clients’ and the consultants’ satisfaction at seeing the first buildings complete and ready to be fitted out, the detailed geotechnical solutions proving their worth as future stages continue to take shape. NEWZEALAND’S TRUSTED DRILLING SPECIALIST • Geotechnical • Environmental • Geothermal • Sample • Water Well Drilling www.dcndrilling.co.nz
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=