56 | CONTRACTING Ross Reid Contractors Lakeside Development proves a complex project Ross Reid Contractors has been busy working on the first stages of the Lakeside Development near Lake Waikere. Sue Russell We're continued supporters of Ross Reid Contractors. Supplying them with Accessibility Solutions to complement their projects across the North Island. www.cmtgroup.co.nz 0800 14 74 33 P Craig 027 777 7879 E craig@ipave.co.nz W ipave4u.co.nz Specialists in Civil and Domestic Work • Paths • Patios • Exposed Aggregate • Coloured Concrete • Plain Concrete • Kerbing for Civil Work With a role looking after the team of Project Managers at Ross Reid Contractors across any number of sites at any one time, Contracts Manager Arun Rana says his days are filled with challenges to solve and overcome. Ross Reid Contractors supplies a raft of services and skills into the civil works sector, often supporting large-scale developments from their very beginning. “We have close to 120 people working in the company now and I report directly to Jarrad Reid. The sub-division market is where we tend to do a lot of work and bring considerable skills and experiences to the table,” Arun says. It’s demanding work at any time, but especially in the current economic environment where developers are anxious to lock-in prices for a couple of years. “We have control over a considerable amount of the work we undertake, with our own labour and plant but when engaging subbies it’s our endeavour to try to get them locked in on price, to give certainty to ourselves and the clients we are working for.” Part of achieving pricing-efficiency is to purchase materials upfront. Each project taken on has their own site and project manager and a senior management team member responsible for overseeing the development. As Contracts Manager, Arun links with these key personnel on each project as it evolves. The Auckland-based company is likely to be involved in civil work anywhere from Silverdale to Te Kauwhata, where, when Business North spoke with Arun, a large-scale land development for housing called Lakeside Development is underway. The project is scheduled to span several years and Ross Reid Contracting has been involved since its inception. “This has been a very complex project and we’ve done very well. The beauty of Ross Reid Contractors is that with our own plant and people we can move resources around as needed making for very efficient scheduling and progress.” Lakeside Development, when broken down, has five significant stages to it, and each stage is further broken down into smaller projects, so there’s a large amount of planning and organising required to ensure works proceed smoothly and on time. Despite the best planning, there’s always an element of the unknown as Arun says this project certainly has presented. “There are extremely complex soil structures which are very sensitive to water and traffic, so when designing and digging down for roads, we’ve had to take extreme care to undertake the work to ensure the integrity of the ground which will have a whole array of residential developments on it and many roads.” Stages 1 and 2 of Lakeside Development have now been completed with Stage 3 well underway. Positioned right next to Lake Waikere, before any significant work above ground could progress, Ross Reid Contractors had to build a stop-bank. Other works included, a large 11m deep pump station with a high water-table, in some places, just a metre below the ground. To complete these works pumping out large volumes of water was necessary. “If you don’t get rid of the water, then as construction happens above, the soil tends to jellyfy and when this happens it can’t support any weight or construction activity on it, so dealing with the water was the first big challenge.” Over 200,000 cubic metres of substandard soils were removed and used as landscape fill rather than shift it off site. Construction of stop-banks were also necessary to safe-guard against potential rising in the level of the lake. Stage 2 of Lakeside Development, owned by Winton Property Development, has been broken down into two sub-stages. Creation of 142 Lots in Stage 2A was completed late last year, while a further 153 Lots in Stage 2B has been completed in September 2022. For the quality of the work undertaken in Stage 2A, Ross Reid Contractors was nominated in the top four of the ‘Projects between $5million to $20million’ category of this year’s CCNZ Hirepool Construction Excellence Awards. Usually about 45 staff are working at the Te Kauwhata site and Arun says the project will extend another four to five years. “It is by far the most complex project I’ve undertaken since joining Ross Reid Contractors 5 ½ years ago but equally it’s been really satisfying to see what we’ve achieved and to know we’ve helped form a subdivision of significance to the community in Te Kauwhata.
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