68 | Armor Demolition CONTRACTING S T A G I N T E R I O R S . CO . N Z I N T E R I O R S A N D C O N S T R U C T I O N Clearing the decks for the next project Armor Demolition offers demolition and soft strip services across Christchurch, Canterbury, Queenstown, Wanaka, Otago, and the wider South Island. T T Virginia Wright Based in Kaiapoi, with a secondary base in Queenstown, Armor Demolition offers demolition and soft strip services across Christchurch, Canterbury, Queenstown, Wanaka, Otago, and the wider South Island. They started trading at the start of 2019 with a team of three, led by owner Tim Murphy. By the end of January there were five and now, seven years later, they’re a well-established team which fluctuates between 9 and 14 depending on how much work is on. The company that began with some hand tools and a single vehicle grew steadily with Tim buying more machinery along the way and gaining a solid reputation for integrity and hard work. While plenty of staff have come and gone over the years the core team has remained the same since the beginning. Cory Smith, Blake Newlands, and one of Tim’s younger brothers, Jake, are the mainstay of Armor Demolition along with Tim himself and Jessie Sanders who runs the office. “She’s been such a blessing. She’s kept things going in the office since day one and the others are the core of the demolition side of it: hard working, good with clients and totally reliable,” says Tim. Having already been in the demolition industry for years Tim was well known by the key players in the demolition and construction community including Taggarts Earthmoving who also do demolition. They gave Armor Demolition its first job and the relationship continues with Armor now doing all their soft stripping or more technical preparation before the walls come down. Soft stripping involves stripping everything back to bare walls or to the concrete and steel structure if readying the building for demolition. Not every demolition job is straightforward and when, for example, a building connects to another it’s a company like Armor Demolition who comes in to cut and crane, or hand demolish, a portion of the building to separate it from its neighbour before the bigger machinery finishes the job. They recently spent 10 months stripping a 6-storey resort in Queenstown, that had leaky issues, back to concrete and steel, readying it for full remediation and refurbishment by Brosnan Construction. When an office or shop lease ends, or a café gets new managers, Armor Demolition do the de-fit, stripping it back to bare walls, ready for companies like Angus Interiors, and Stag Interiors and Construction, to re-fit for the new tenants. Native timbers, double glazed windows and doors, kitchens, carpet tiles and the occasional steel beam and any good roofing iron are salvaged and sold, with the extra benefit of keeping it out of landfill. On a house demolition they salvage everything they can before removing the rest. Tim’s decision from the beginning to focus on soft strip rather than compete with the bigger, hard demolition firms continues to pay off with many of his clients coming to him before they go further afield. They know they’ll get an honest price for a job that will be done efficiently, skilfully and well, with the attention to detail that means the client gets exactly what they’ve asked for.
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