NZ Contractor 1408

NEW ZEALAND’S CIVIL CONTRACTING INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

AUGUST 2014 $8.95

HIREPOOL’S Massive equipment investment

INSIDE: Tommy Parker talks about his new role and challenges at NZTA The rebuilding of Christchurch and the companies involved The inexhaustible Morris McFall – not putting his feet up just yet The Waterview Connection interchange reaches a milestone AUGUST 2014 1

CONTRACTOR CONTENTS

22

INSIDE: Regulars 4 Editorial 6 Upfront

Highlights / Features 22 Putting a city back together Rebuilding damaged street-level civic infrastructure in ‘quake ravaged’ Christchurch.

16 On the Cover 56 Classic Machines

30 The inexhaustable Morris McFall An impressive collection of vintage tractors, cars and vehicles as well as making possible a rehab centre for the disabled.

60 Motoring 62 Innovations 62 Contractors’ Diary

34 Halfway there

64 Advertisers Index

Profile

The huge Waterview connection interchange is a crucial part of the Auckland ring road motorway system.

Goodman Contracting are using a new internetbased surveying system while building the Kapiti Expressway.

Adopting a new country.

50 Jeremy Sole NZ Contractors’ Federation 51 Chris Olsen

In one of the most significant single heavy equipment orders for delivery in this country, Komatsu is supplying 75 new excavators to leading equipment hire business, Hirepool.

Left to right: Komatsu’s, Matt McLaughlan, Phillip Dring, and Gary Richardson.

40 Earthmoving through the cloud

18 Tommy Parker

Comment

ON THE COVER

46

Roading – the aggregate issue Third in a series on roading, looking at the aggregate issue in terms of pavement quality.

See page 16

Roading New Zealand

52 Dean Johnson Financial consultant

53 Janet Brothers Lifecare Consultants

54 Jared Holt Kensington Swan Construction LawTeam

55 Jonathan Bhana-Thomson NZ Heavy Haulage Association

18 2 AUGUST 2014

30

34

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CONTRACTOR EDITORIAL

PUBLISHER Contrafed Publishing Co Ltd Suite 2.1, 93 Dominion Road, Mt Eden, Auckland PO Box 112357, Penrose, Auckland 1642 Phone: +64 9 636 5715 Fax: +64 9 636 5716 www.contrafed.co.nz

Sunrise, Sunset When Tevye, Golde, Hodel and Perchik sang about the rapidly changing seasons of their lives in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, little did they know that the Tsarist Russia of 1905 – the world they inhabited, on stage at least, wouldn’t last more than a few more years.

And ever since, the world of change has been constant, bombarding us with faster and faster leaps in technology that allow us to make faster and faster changes to our environment. Not all change is necessarily good (read any news reports about what Isis is up to in Iraq and Syria at the moment for more on negative progress) but usually good progress comes about from changes – changes in thinking, changes in leadership, and changes in technology.

So this month we look at change, some planned (the Waterview interchange in Auckland is nearly 50 percent complete already – see page 34), some unplanned (a major review of progress in the Christchurch rebuild is on page 22), and the future of 3D cloud-based technologically driven excavation work is on page 40.

What each has in common is that they’re pushing technology to give us developments we couldn’t otherwise have achieved at a cost we could afford, before the technology was invented. And 3D in-cab developments will change the way every cubic metre of dirt is moved from now until robots take over.

Not all change is necessarily new technology though.

Ex-NZ Contractors’ Federation president Morris McFall is preserving some old technology at his museum in Tauranga. His collection of restored vintage tractors, cars and stationary engines will be a treasure trove for many. And allows us to finally use the caption, “Morris with his collection of bowsers” on a photo, an expression we should use more often.

The Sunrise, Sunset theme also applies to people. Regular columnist and CEO of Roading New Zealand, Chris Olsen, signs off this month after nearly 15 years leading his organisation.

All expectations are that within a few days, members of both Roading New Zealand and NZCF will have approved a merger, reuniting the two groups. Chris decided early on in the discussions not to pursue the new role, and we wish him well.

And on page 18 we welcome Tommy Parker to his new national role of NZTA group manager highways. After a couple of years of constant change within the agency, Parker says, “I’ve got no plans for change or restructuring: we’ve really just got to get on and finish what we’ve started”. That’s a sentiment that I’m sure will be welcomed by many.

Tevye and Golde’s view of change, wondering how their children had grown up in front of their eyes (Sunrise, Sunset), and with no knowledge of what the future held for them or their brethren across Europe and Russia, can perhaps be viewed as naive to our modern sensibilities. In 100 years’ time they’ll probably be wondering how we were so simple too.

Kevin Lawrence, Editor

GENERAL MANAGER & EDITOR Kevin Lawrence DDI: 09 636 5710 Mobile: 021 512 800 Email: kevin@contrafed.co.nz EDITORIAL MANAGER Alan Titchall DDI: 09 636 5712 Mobile: 027 405 0338 Email: alan@contrafed.co.nz REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS Richard Campbell, Tom Clarke, Hugh de Lacy, Peter Gill, Gavin Riley, Lawrence Schaffler, Richard Silcock, Jeremy Sole.

ADVERTISING / SALES Charles Fairbairn DDI: 09 636 5724 Mobile: 021 411890 Email: charles@contrafed.co.nz ADMIN / SUBSCRIPTIONS DDI: 09 636 5715 Email: admin@contrafed.co.nz PRODUCTION Design: TMA Design, 09 636 5713 Printing: Client Focused Solutions Ltd 027 255 1818

Contributions welcome Please contact the editor before sending them in.

Articles in Contractor are copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the publisher.

Opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the shareholding organisations.

The official magazine of The New Zealand Contractors’ Federation www.nzcontractors.co.nz Roading New Zealand www.roadingnz.org.nz The Aggregate & Quarry Association www.aqa.org.nz The New Zealand Heavy Haulage Association www.hha.org.nz The Crane Association of New Zealand www.cranes.org.nz Rural Contractors New Zealand www.ruralcontractors.org.nz The Ready Mixed Concrete Association www.nzrmca.org.nz Infrastructure Industry Training Organisation www.infratrain.co.nz

ISSN 0110-1382

4 AUGUST 2014

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CONTRACTOR UPFRONT

Half a century of concrete It’s been 50 glorious years since the concrete industry held its first conference, so it is only fitting that the 2014 milestone forum is back where it all started, at the Wairakei Thermal Resort in Taupo, October 9–11.

Six industry organisations have been involved in pulling the special event together – the Cement & Concrete Association, Concrete Masonry Association, Concrete Society, Master Concrete Placers Association, Ready Mixed Concrete Association and Precast New Zealand Inc. These organisations have been sourcing papers for the event that celebrate concrete projects important to the country’s economic and social development over the past 50 years, as well as the customary papers on research, design trends, marketing opportunities, recent developments, construction, materials, methodologies and new issues for cement and concrete.

Keynote speakers include Gavin Cormack (retired executive chairman of Beca Group); Hugo Corres Peiretti (professor of Structural Concrete and Conceptual Design at the School of Civil Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid; fib Deputy Presidium); and Ken Hover (professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Cornell University). All three have impressive biographies that can be read in full on the conference website.

The delegate programme will consist of three half-day technical sessions, including a combination of plenary and parallel sessions.

Early-bird conference registration rates are available until September 5, saving delegates $100, which is worth a couple of rounds of golf and a wind-down at the 19th hole of the Wairakei Resort, or nearly a round of golf at the Wairakei International Golf Course right next door. A partner’s programme will run concurrently.

There is no hard copy brochure this year and all registrations are via the website – www.theconcreteconference.co.nz.

Yuichi Tsujimoto, president and chief executive officer Hitachi Construction Machinery congratulates master technician Luke Larsen.

Well done Luke Hitachi technician Luke Larsen took out the ‘Best in the World’ title at the 2014 Hitachi Most Valuable Service Technician, beating out competition from six other regional winners including Europe, Russia, Japan, China, India and South Africa.

Luke Larsen, a master technician from the company’s Silverdale branch, achieved success earlier in the year ranking number one in the New Zealand round of the competition. He then reigned victorious at the Oceania competition, where he took out the title of Asia-Pacific Hitachi Top Technician ahead of competitors from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. Luke travelled to Japan at the start of July for a shot at attaining the elusive world title – a feat that has never been achieved by anyone from the Asia-Pacific region during the seven years this event has been running, until now.

Speed a group effort in Hawkes Bay The Hastings District Council is depending on public feedback on its new Safe Speed Area put into practice in March, which reduced the speed limit from 100km/h to 80 km/h on about 78 kilometres of roads representing around five percent of the district’s roading network.

Four months later, the Council is keen to hear from all road users,

including local contractors, about the success, or otherwise, of the Safe Speed Areas. Submissions can be made until September 22. Submitters will also be invited to speak to Council about their submissions. Information on the speed limit changes and submission forms is available on www.myvoicemychoice.co.nz.

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UPFRONT CONTRACTOR

Accolade for Nelson builder It was fitting that the highest-ever honour was awarded at the largest-ever conference when Nelson builder Richard Merrifield was made a Lifetime Member of Certified Builders late last month.

The association is also enjoying its highest-ever number of members and more than 500 of them fronted up to the 16th Certified Builders’ Association of New Zealand Annual Conference & Expo in Hamilton to peruse 70 trade stalls, listen to the Hon Nick Smith open the conference, the Hon Clayton Cosgrove close the proceedings and in-between applaud Merrifield on receipt of his award.

Merrifield is a long-time member of CBANZ and has also served as its chairman.

He owns R J Merrifield Ltd, specializing in architectural houses and alterations in and around the Nelson region and is currently on the Building Practitioners board. He was a member of the Minister of Building and Housing taskforce on productivity, a

member of the Building Act Review advisory group and former chairman of the BRANZ advisory committee.

Merrifield and CBANZ founder Craig Wilkinson will be the only two Lifetime Members of the association.

Above: Receiving the award (left to right): Dave Brown – chair Certified Builders; Richard Merrifield; Grant Florence – CEO Certified Builders.

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CONTRACTOR UPFRONT

A TALE OF TWO TITANS

It was a big lift – a very big lift – and it needed a lot of muscle to do it.

The 200-tonne steel girder beam to support a bridge span in the State of Kuwait was part of a highway expansion project to assist the growth of inter-regional and international trade with the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries.

The enormous girder needed a tandem lift due to its length, and so two cranes were called to the task by the bridge contractor. Because of the jobsite and surrounding area being congested, the cranes would also have to have a high degree of manoeuvrability which brought to mind the Terex AC 1000 and AC 500-2 all-terrain cranes

owned by Kuwait-based Integrated Logistics Company.

Both the eight-axle AC 500-2 crane, with its 56-metre boom and the nine-axle AC 1000 crane, with its 50-metre boom and all-axle steering, were able to be driven down public roads and city streets to reach the site which significantly shortened crane set-up time at the site, where an eight-man crew was able to install the counterweight, rig the cranes and have them ready for the lift in one day. Twenty flatbed trailers transported 388 tonnes of counterweight plus accessories to the site over a two-day period.

Only in New Zealand Resource consents make good amunition in this country as evident by another stoush between roading infrastructure oppostion and Government projects – this time the proposed Basin Reserve Flyover.

Save the Basin campaigners joined forces with the Mt Victoria Historical Society last month to bollock the Government over its granting of a retrospective consent to simply move the old, and unused, Home of Compassion Creche, built in 1914, to make way for the new War Memorial Tunnel and War Memorial Park, which is meant to open in time for the 2015 ANZAC day and the anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign.

Back in May the NZTA started moving the heritage-listed creche (the first in the country) just 15 metres from its original Buckle Street site, but stopped work when it was accused of moving it to make way for the proposed $90-million Basin Bridge and motorway, which is still waiting on consent.

The old building sits close to the edge of both the proposed Basin flyover and the War Memorial Park, which was passed under urgency so moving the building under the latter project does not need resource consent. Basin Flyover opposition claim the creche has been moved for the Basin Flyover so is illegal.

The Transport Agency “strongly denied” this, of course, and believes that it was always the intention of the War Memorial Park special legislation to move the building.

8 AUGUST 2014

Flyover opposition groups argue that the special law passed by Parliament in 2012 to allow for the park’s construction did not cover the area of land where the creche sat, and that the Basin Bridge Board of Inquiry should consider the proposal as if the creche was still in its original position.

Then the saga got even sillier.

The Governor-General stepped in and used his special powers to order the Basin flyover board of inquiry (yes, another board of inquiry) to grant the necessary resource consents to shift the creche on the basis that the War Memorial Park would not be completed in time unless it was moved. That did not satisfy the critics who still claimed the building was outside the official boundaries of the park and the move was illegal.

The Save the Basin group and the Mt Victoria Historical Society wrote to the judge heading the Basin Bridge Board of Inquiry asking that it treat the Basin Flyover proposal as if the creche remained in its original position.

Since then, in a draft decision, the Environmental Protection Authority, has decided not to allow the project to go ahead. That decision was followed by a 20 working day period during which the Minister, submitters and other relevant parties could comment.

The date for the EPA’s final decision on the Basin Flyover project is August 30.

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CONTRACTOR UPFRONT K e an LIN aL N ng ER au ST M EA Te GA AN UR TA e an nL ma Tru

Gloucester Road

n kso Jac reet ) St /out t in (lef

Exeter Street (left in/out)

Baypark Stadium

Maunganui Road State Highway 2

Mata pih Road i

d Roa nui nga Mau

Maunganui Road

Owens Place

Titoki Place

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ay 29 Highw State

The Transport Agency has confirmed its preferred option for the Baypark to Bayfair link upgrade – a $102 million roading project that will reshape State Highway 2 (SH2) in Tauranga.

NZTA acting highway manager Andrew Scott says improvements include two flyovers, one which will take SH2 over the Maunganui-Girven intersection and a second taking State Highway 29 over the

ue ven dA ) cor /out Con left in (

SH2 project preference

ad Girven Ro

Bayfair

railway line and the Te Maunga intersection.

The project will allow direct access from (SH29) to Baypark and Truman Lane and will see the East Coast Main Trunk railway line relocated behind Owens Place. A shared pedestrian and cycle path from Owens Place

RELOCATED RAILWAY LOCAL ROADS STATE HIGHWAY WALKING / CYCLING ACCESS

to Baypark is also proposed as part of the plan.

The project will next go through the consent process, with a construction date to be determined following detailed design and approvals.

Team Key’s road plan It was worded in such a way that nothing was certain and also, could it have been a bribe?

If, says the Prime Minister, he is re-elected on 20 September, another National Government will invest an extra $212 million in an Accelerated Regional Roading Package as targeted funding to deliver 11 high-priority roading projects across the country, and investigate the viability of another three.

The Accelerated Regional Roading Package will be funded by asset sales and is additional to the proposed regional highway funding programme included in a draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) announced last month.

Key added that our regions have been vital to our economic recovery, but there were still more regional roading projects that needed to get underway to ensure safer journeys and continued growth.

So, if John Key returns for another term, this is the nearly

10 AUGUST 2014

$600 million roading promise he has made: Kawarau Falls Bridge, Mingha Bluff to Rough Creek realignment (Otago), Akerama Curves Realignment and Passing Lane (Canterbury), State Highway 35 Slow Vehicle Bays, (Gisborne), Normanby Overbridge Realignment (Taranaki), Whirokino Trestle Bridge replacement (Manawatu/ Wanganui), Motu Bridge replacement (Gisborne), Opawa and Wairau Bridge replacements (Marlborough), Taramakau Road/Rail Bridge (West Coast Loop), road north to Smeatons Hill safety improvements, (Northland) and Mt Messenger and Awakino Gorge Corridor (Taranaki). Furthermore he will ‘investigate the viability’ of: Port of Napier access package (Hawke’s Bay), Nelson Southern Link (Nelson) and Rotorua Eastern Arterial (Bay of Plenty). Although a number of the roading projects would take place in safe National seats, two of the schemes would benefit the Labour-held seats of Palmerston North and West Coast Tasman.

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CONTRACTOR UPFRONT

Stewardship not justified

New hub impressive

The four product waste streams referred to in the Ministry of the Environment’s discussion document on priority waste streams do not demonstrate market failure in any generally accepted sense that would possibly justify mandatory product stewardship, states BusinessNZ. Environment Minister Amy Adams released a discussion document entitled “Priority waste streams for product stewardship intervention” on the question of government intervention to improve the management of four product waste streams – electrical and electronic equipment, tyres, agchemicals and farm plastics, and refrigerants and other synthetic greenhouse gases.

But BusinessNZ says that trying to find conclusive evidence of market failure in the waste market is very difficult, particularly attempting to identify “priority products” which should be subject to mandatory product stewardship. The body said while certainly, the inappropriate disposal of products such as agricultural chemicals can have significant environmental effects, this of itself is not a reason to impose a blanket obligation on product manufacturers to control product use and ultimately disposal. BusinessNZ has drafted a submission to the minister whose own Discussion Document can be perused at www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/waste/ priority-waste-streams-may14/index.html

The new atrium connecting the new Manukau Institute of Technology with the Manukau Railway station is one of the most impressive interchanges in Auckland.

Auckland Transport’s chief executive David Warburton made the observation at the opening of the facility late last month. The atrium is the size of a rugby field with views through six floors of the education facility above and is decorated in a cultural theme.

The rail line to Manukau Station was specially built by Kiwi Rail and approached the station in a trench up to seven metres below ground level.

It was the first new rail connection to be built in Auckland in 82 years and was ready for the introduction of electric trains.

Wellington-based Alex Kelly is the new national equipment sales manager for CablePrice. Kelly will lead Hitachi, John Deere and Bell equipment sales activities across New Zealand working within the sales and marketing team.

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UPFRONT CONTRACTOR

NOC contract model nets results

Speed up your HPMV permits

While it’s still early days, the Transport Agency says it is “pleased” with the results from its new maintenance and operations approach.

Southern Business Unit manager Niclas Johansson has taken up responsibility for the high-level liaison for industry regarding – and oversight of the effectiveness of – the new model.

He says that constrained budgets were a major impetus for development of the NOC approach, and the good news is that the sector is starting to see results from the new collaborative approach.

The Agency says it is seeing increased competition from contractors and consultants, and new entrants to the market through the tender processes.

“The emphasis on quality as part of tender evaluation means the Transport Agency is playing close attention to this part of the process,” says Niclas.

“The tender evaluation teams have been pleased with how some of the tenderers are responding to this.”

He has also been impressed with the “high level engagement” between the Agency and industry that is; “enabling a transparent approach to learnings and a drive for continuous improvement in both documentation and the development of maintenance management plans”.

Niclas’ role is a liaison point for the network outcomes model and he is interested in hearing from industry if there are any issues, comments or feedback on the NOC model. Having been involved in the Road Maintenance Taskforce and Road Efficiency Group, he is likely to be known to many in the industry.

To date, four network outcomes contracts have been let and two conversions completed. A further three contracts are expected to be awarded by the end of this year, says the NZTA.

Delays in issuing permits for high productivity motor vehicles (HPMVs) are becoming fewer as the NZTA works to speed up processing. Although around 2800 over-mass permits, 920 overlength permits and just over 1000 50MAX permits have already been issued since the beginning of the financial year, the agency admits it has still got some way to go in making the process quicker.

The NZTA has improved permit times to now be able to issue 50MAX permits within two working days of application, but complex HPMV permits which require specific route, local road access and bridge analysis can take significantly longer, says national permitting manager Kelly Timms.

HPMV permits require bridge-by-bridge analysis, which takes time and while many permit applications can take about a month to process, other more complex permits can be even longer, she advises.

“There are also a number of other players involved in the process, namely local councils and the Police. So any changes we make need to include them and their processes, while remaining legally compliant.”

But while the agency is working on improving turnaround, there are measures that operators can take as well. These include making sure Vehicle Configuration Details – such as axle spacings, tyre sizes and typical/operational axle mass – are complete and accurate; Timms also reminds operators that each route and vehicle combination needs to be assessed as a different vehicle combination/weight for a previously approved route might not be approved.

AUGUST 2014 13

CONTRACTOR UPFRONT

Fletcher wins big The $300 million anchor project designed to bring all of the justice and emergency response agencies in Christchurch into one precinct, has been won by Fletcher Construction company.

Courtrooms, Police, Corrections and a state-of-the-art, purposebuilt Emergency Operations Centre will make up the 40,000 square metre zone, in one of the largest multi-agency government colocation projects in our history, according to Justice Minister Judith Collins.

The early works contractor, Downer, has nearly finished stabilising more than 25,000 cubic metres of soil, pouring 3500 cubic metres of cement to support a 1.2 metre thick concrete raft, which is the base for two of the proposed three buildings.

Projected completion is 2016 – which will be achieved with help from local subcontractors, and national and international partners as required – when an estimated 2000 people are expected to return to business in the inner city each day.

The project can be followed on time-lapse camera feed at http:// ccdu.govt.nz/projects-and-precincts/justice-and-emergencyservices-precinct. A short film of earthworks time-lapse footage (1m 40sec) Precinct Timelapse June 2014 ONLINE.f4v is also available in HD, HD without music and small file for web.

IN BRIEF New Plymouth congestion targeted Construction has started on removing a major bottleneck on SH3 leading into New Plymouth. Called the Vickers to City project, the Government has also committed to progress the Normanby Overbridge in South Taranaki and work towards improvements to the challenging corridor to the north that passes through Mt Messenger and the Awakino Gorge.

Accolades for MWH MWH NZ won two of the three 2014 Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia awards in the New Zealand division last month – The Physical Works over $10 million award for the Eastern Selwyn Sewerage Scheme at Rolleston and The Physical Works Projects $2 million to $10 million award for the Mapua Wharf Wastewater Pump Station built on the most contaminated site in the country.

The third award went to a team made up of members of various organisations that included MWH chief engineer for construction contracts, Andrew Brickell. The IPWEA awards recognise engineering excellence in infrastructure projects completed in the last two years.

Comment on transport initiatives Auckland communities were encouraged to have their say about two significant transport projects in their area – the East West Connections and the replacement of the old Mangere bridge.

The community days at Onehunga and Sylvia Park shopping mall were organised by the NZTA and Auckland Transport. The Transport Agency’s acting highways manager, Steve Mutton, says the events delivered on earlier commitments to work with local communities.

“We want to build on the great feedback we’ve had from people to replace the bridge and carry that on into the East West Connections programme. This is the latest step for us to ensure that we fully understand what people are experiencing when travelling in Onehunga, Mt Wellington, Otahuhu, Penrose, Mangere and East Tamaki.”

Crane trainee of the year The 40th Anniversary Conference at Rydges Lakeland Resort in Queenstown was held last month as the first industry sector conference for 2014.

Pictured is the Trainee of the year – Tim Rhodes (right) from Smith Cranes & Construction – who is presented with his certificate by Gary Fissendon from the Skills Organisation.

Congratulations The lucky new subscription winner of the self-illumination power pack from Lightknight is Grant Duncan from Waiau.

Congratulations from the Contractor team and thanks to all those who participated.

14 AUGUST 2014

Backing Northland Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee rejected the Labour Party’s criticism of it not investing in Northland after the storms it went through last month.

“Up to $1.66 billion worth of Government funding is currently committed to Northland roading projects,” says Brownlee.

“The Government announced up to $33.5 million worth of extra investment in upgrading two roading projects Northland councils told us were urgent – one of them on the very stretch of State Highway 1 south of Kawakawa which has been washed out.”

All identified damage to Northland’s roading network from the most recent storms is on the State highway network, meaning the cost of repairs will come from the National Land Transport Fund.

Last month NZTA contractors were working 24 hours a day at State Highway 1 south of Kawakawa to open an alternative route as soon as possible. A permanent fix will take some time, says the agency.

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CONTRACTOR ON THE COVER

Hirepool’s

massive equipment investment In one of the most significant single heavy equipment orders for delivery in this country, Komatsu is supplying 75 new excavators to leading equipment hire business, Hirepool.

THE 75 NEW KOMATSU excavators, ranging in capacity from 1.8 tonnes to major infrastructure project-sized 20 tonnes, will be deployed across Hirepool’s national network of 58 hire centres to meet the specific demands of customers.

Hirepool chief executive officer Brian Stephen says the excavators are a major part of a $20 million budget approved by shareholders for new equipment.

“This investment clearly underlines the strong commitment of our major shareholder, Next Capital, to continue to invest and support the business into the future,” he says.

Part of the arriving order has been deployed to Northland to assist local authorities and contractors in carrying out repairs on the roading network ravaged by heavy rains and floods in July.

“Major weather events such as those recently experienced in Northland often require additional equipment to be transferred across our geographic network to assist in the clean-up and rebuild,” says Stephen.

“With branches from Invercargill to Kaitaia we are able to meet the needs of our customers wherever they operate.

“With the addition of these 75 excavators to our asset pool we are positioned to provide the additional resources as required.”

The latest model Komatsu excavators were selected by Hirepool as being best in their class with leading edge technology that offers high productivity as well as being environmentally friendly in terms of fuel consumption and other consumables.

16 AUGUST 2014

General manager Assets, Matt McLaughlin, says the machines added to the fleet range through the classes with excavators with 1.8T, 3.0T, 8.8T, 13.8T and 20T capacities.

“The larger machines will be attractive to contractors working on the roads of national importance, such as the McKays Crossing to Peka Peka expressway north of Wellington, major housing projects and industrial development.

“Smaller excavators will be used in the roll out of the ultra-fast broadband network now being commissioned by Chorus, while the smallest machines are likely to be used for preparing sites for home extensions and similar sized projects.”

Hirepool has 22,000 customers with active accounts plus another 100,000 casual customers, principally from the do-ityourself market.

“We are the leading provider of hire equipment in New Zealand with a particular emphasis on working with customers in the residential and non-residential construction and maintenance sectors, infrastructure, the resources, energy and industrial sectors and events management including party hire,” says McLaughlin.

“Our customers use Hirepool to achieve more efficient capital management by optimising their own fleets, focus on their core competencies or achieve fleet flexibility.

“Discussions with our larger customers help us understand their priorities and specific equipment needs which contributes to the efficient use of the approximately 100,000 assets Hirepool can offer.”

Left to right: Derek Berry, Barry Millar, Matt McLaughlan, Phillip Dring, Gary Richardson, Gareth Dixon.

Hirepool has been operating now for nearly 60 years and the recent merger with Hirequip has created the opportunity to combine two highly complementary businesses to better service its customers’ needs.

The rationalisation of assets since the merger has contributed to a low average fleet age to which the latest purchase of Komatsu excavators has further contributed. Hirepool now has a significant in-house maintenance capability providing timely support to customers.

Comments Brian Stephen; “Hirepool will continue to invest in its fleet to provide advanced technology and highly productive equipment to our customers who are always looking at more efficient ways of operating.

“There is a large pipeline of significant projects that central and local government has committed to over the next 10 years, plus the ongoing demands of the private sector, that provide us with the confidence to invest in the future of our customers’ businesses.” l

“With the addition of these 75 excavators to our asset pool we are positioned to provide the additional resources as required.�

AUGUST 2014 17

CONTRACTOR PROFILE

Adopting a new country Tommy Parker, the new network group operations manager for the NZTA in Wellington, talks with HUGH DE LACY about the challenges of the role.

Parker landed his initial posting as the NZTA’s highways manager for Auckland and Northland at a careers’ fair in London; realising a long-held ambition to move here with wife Kate and their three children.

18 AUGUST 2014

THOUGH HE’D SPENT most of his life in England, Tommy Parker’s arrival here in 2005 to take up a senior posting in Auckland with the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) was something of a homecoming.

It also proved to be a major career stepping stone, resulting in his recent appointment to succeed long-serving Colin Crampton as the agency’s group manager highways and network operations in Wellington.

Parker had landed his initial posting as the NZTA’s highways manager for Auckland and Northland at a careers’ fair in London the previous year, realising a long-held ambition to move to New Zealand with wife Kate and their three children.

Parker’s interest in the country arose from the fact that his mother was a Kiwi who had married an Englishman, the result of which was that Tommy grew up in Sussex.

Holding both Kiwi and British passports, though he had never previously visited his mother’s homeland, Parker quickly attracted the attention of the NZTA recruiters at the careers’ fair.

They were looking for someone to lead an investigation into the next harbour crossing for Auckland, and Parker was looking for a job Downunder.

He already had extensive international experience in the civil construction industry after graduating in 1994 with a degree in planning, followed by a Master of Science in transport engineering, at Manchester University.

Engineering is in Parker’s blood.

“My ancestors were surveyors or road-builders; my maternal great-grandfather, Christopher Sealy, surveyed the original non-military roads in the Waikato and was also chief engineer on the building of the Arapuna dam on the Waikato River,” he told Contractor.

Tommy Parker’s first job after university was with a London transport consultancy handling highways projects, but in 1998 he won a contract with the Caribbean Development Bank to formulate a national transport plan for Trinidad.

He followed that up with a succession of roading-related schemes in Dubai and Saudi Arabia before succumbing to the attraction of his mother’s birthplace.

He had barely got his teeth into Auckland’s second harbour crossing investigation when within two months he found himself diverted and promoted to the Auckland highways network management role.

“I was very lucky,” he says of that appointment.

“I had a very ambitious building programme that included the Manukau Harbour crossing, the Newmarket Viaduct, the Victoria Park tunnel and the Waterview Connection.”

He also established the Joint Transportation Operations Centre that manages the traffic flows in Auckland, and set up the Auckland Motorways Alliance with contractors Fulton Hogan and Armitage, and consultants Beca and Resolve Professional Design Services, which has been handling Auckland motorway maintenance for the past six years.

Parker held the Auckland position for five years before being elevated to the same role at

[

“We’ve got a series of what we call ‘network outcome contracts’ [NOC] which is how we’re going to deliver maintenance, and we’re rolling out that programme.”

]

the national level, something he sees as “a huge challenge because we have a bigger budget than ever before”.

“Next year we’re looking to implement a programme worth nearly $2 billion which comes with a lot of responsibility and profile.

“We’ve got a year where we’re going to focus on consolidation and delivery.

“I’ve got no plans for change or restructuring: we’ve really just got to get on and finish what we’ve started.

“We’ve got a series of what we call ‘network outcome contracts’ [NOC], which is how we’re going to deliver maintenance, and we’re rolling out that programme.

“We’re also adding to the Auckland Acceleration Programme, another package of projects announced by the Government a year ago for the widening of the northern and southern motorways as it looks to improve traffic flow in Auckland.”

Then there’s the Government’s big push on road safety.

“We’ve got a commitment to zero harm, and that’s something that we really want to take forward into the coming year.”

A further challenge he faces is implementing a one-network approach to traffic operations that will see the NZTA work in with its local authority partners to

AUGUST 2014 19

CONTRACTOR PROFILE

[

ramp up operations and management.

“Stepping into this role is occasionally quite daunting, but it’s also very exciting, and it’s not difficult to get the adrenalin pumping,” he says.

As national highways group manager, Parker will have a staff of 400 arranged into four regional business units and a range of subsidiary offices, all of which he has personally visited since taking up his appointment.

He’s no less keen to build on the agency’s relationships with the civil construction industry, especially in the wake of the recent restructuring of the highways maintenance delivery programme.

“We have the NOC contracts that we’re rolling out at the moment, and it’s a very ambitious programme, but we believe we’ve got the right balance.”

The initial disquiet the restructuring provoked in the industry has calmed down; “though we’ve still got to continue working through the issues together, and we’re totally committed to being open and transparent to the end”.

Parker was aware of provincial criticism that the Government’s Roads of National Significance (RONS) programme, initially launched in part to offset the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, had sucked money out of the provincial roading system and channelled it into the seven main urban project areas, six of which are in the North Island.

He was on annual leave in England when the Prime Minister announced $212 million in additional funding for regional roads at the National Party’s annual conference in June.

Contacted by Contractor later, Parker welcomed the announcement, as did the Contractors’ Federation chief executive Jeremy Sole who had been one of those in the industry concerned that the RONS programme was taking funds from the regions. Federated Farmers and Local Government NZ also welcomed the announcement.

The extra funding for 14 regional roads would benefit smaller contractors as well as the big players, who routinely engage

““Obviously while we’ve got a big programme this year, we’ve never enough money for everything, so we need to work on prioritising things and talking to folks.”

]

subcontractors to deliver between 20 percent and 30 percent of a project’s value.

Meantime Parker says the agency is committed to working with its partners and he has enjoyed his first few months in the job and getting around the country and seeing the challenges that everyone’s facing.

“Obviously while we’ve got a big programme this year, we’ve never enough money for everything, so we need to work on prioritising things and talking to folks.

“I totally understand these issues, and hopefully we can find a way forward.”

Parker says he’s delighted with the New Zealand he has found after hearing so much about it from his mother.

He’s not quite the typical rugby-mad Kiwi yet, having been a fan of London football team West Ham United since he was four years old.

Parker’s revelled in the excitement around the soccer World Cup in Brazil last month, but he also received a special thrill when West Ham visited New Zealand to play the local professional side, the Phoenix.

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CONTRACTOR PROJECT

PUTTING A CITY back together

There’s no SCIRTing around the challenge – rebuilding damaged street-level civic infrastructure in ’quake-ravaged Christchurch is a complex five-year task for superstar contractors. The job is about halfway through. GAVIN RILEY reviews the progress.

Above: Coffer dam under the Armagh Street bridge in April to enable repair by SCIRT’s Downer delivery team. Pictured is site engineer Tom Harding-Ilott.

Opposite page: During and after shots from October 2012 and 2013 respectively from Cunningham Terrace, Lyttelton, where a retaining wall and the road were reconstructed.

22 AUGUST 2014

AS VARIOUS ASPECTS of the Christchurch rebuild continue to make headlines, some for the wrong reasons, an alliance of major civil contractors is quietly replacing or repairing the city’s earthquakedamaged horizontal infrastructure – a massive programme unprecedented in this country.

It’s a multi-project undertaking involving five civil-construction companies, which began in September 2011, and is not due to be completed till the end of 2016. The work embraces rebuilding publicly owned horizontal infrastructure – roads, freshwater, wastewater and stormwater systems, retaining walls, stopbanks, and bridges (including foot bridges).

“Rebuilding this infrastructure is likely to cost around $2 billion with 650 projects ranging in size and complexity,” says Duncan Gibb, general manager of the alliance, known as SCIRT – Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team.

“Overall, as at June 4, 45 percent of our citywide work was complete.”

SCIRT is an alliance consisting of Christchurch City Council, CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority), the Transport Agency, and heavyweight contractors City Care, Downer, Fletcher Construction, Fulton Hogan and McConnell Dowell. Many other Christchurch-based companies are part of SCIRT as subcontractors and suppliers.

“SCIRT does not itself directly employ anyone.

All teams are seconded from the organisations involved as part of the alliance, or engaged directly by subcontractors,” says Gibb, who was previously Fulton Hogan’s northern region manager in Australia (see secondary article).

“If we count up all those people – ie, those in the field, those in the design and management teams, those in the delivery hubs – the total

Duncan Gibb

PEOPLE HIS PRIORITY

figure is around 2000.”

The alliance is a purpose-built organisation put together from the ground up from May 2011. Gibb was brought in from Queensland and was given just four months by the transitional board to put everything together.

“We started from scratch in terms of organisational structure and systems and processes,” he says – adding, however, that the contracting companies involved had already been through a robust series of commercial conversations and had realised the importance of the project to the national interest.

“There was a need to set aside organisational egos for the good of Christchurch and New Zealand as a whole.”

THE TASK AT HAND It is easy to understand this urgency in light of the infrastructure-damage statistics in 2011.

On the surface SCIRT’s task is in the no-win category – trying to put a shattered humpty-dumpty Christchurch together again while working for long periods in territory which weary and frustrated city dwellers have to traverse daily as they struggle to go about their business.

But the Duncan Gibb-led SCIRT team must be doing it as well as anybody can. Their efforts have been recognised internationally with the Brunel Award from the United Kingdom’s Institute of Civil Engineers and locally with the Supreme Canterbury Business Award.

A key to this double success must lie with 52-year-old Duncan, who in midJune flew to the UK with his wife Ruth to give a series of “Collectively we’re stronger” lectures to Institute of Civil Engineers members.

A civil engineer himself for more than 30 years, he says it took him a long time to realise the industry is actually all about people, not only your own but those whose lives are affected by the work you carry out.

Consequently, Duncan holds a half-hour informal gathering of staff every Friday morning in the tea-room – gatherings he regards as contributing to getting the best out of people and helping build high-performance teams to deliver outstanding outcomes for communities.

“Outstanding outcomes” in the Duncan Gibb book is more than just delivering high-quality infrastructure. It also means fostering pubic goodwill, which SCIRT communication and stakeholder manager Annemarie Mora acknowledged late last year when she said; “Rebuilding is a long journey for communities. Our biggest challenge [in 2014] will be keeping our communication relevant and good value so that people remain tolerant.”

Elaborating on this, Duncan says; “The essence is to keep communicating as directly as possible with the people most affected, ie, face to face wherever possible, with business owners and residents, work notices in letterboxes, posters in the community and onsite, community briefings for major works, regular newsletters both printed and electronic, advertising in communities and on radio, and constant liaison with the other groups working with communities to ensure we all remain on the same page – Christchurch Transport Operations Centre, Christchurch City Council, CERA, NZTA, and organisations like the Port of Lyttelton.”

Duncan was born in Zimbabwe, raised in Australia, and was Fulton Hogan’s northern region manager there when the call came three years ago to head and put together SCIRT. He’s eager to emphasise that he’s as committed to the Christchurch rebuild as any New Zealander could be.

“I bought a house here. I live here. My wife’s a Kiwi,” he says.

“I might be an Aussie, but her dad was from Christchurch. You talk to just about anyone here and they have a story that links them to Christchurch.

Everyone wants to do the right thing for them.”

And as for how the job’s going … “We’re measuring a lot of our outputs and benchmarking that against international best practice where we can, or if we can’t find a benchmark against that we look at what else is happening around Australia and New Zealand.

“We’re doing pretty well. I’m stoked. This is the best job I’ve had or ever been on, and it’s delivering some really fantastic outcomes.”

AUGUST 2014 23

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

Top: City Care team at work in Aranui in May on wastewater pipes and pump stations.

Above left: Fulton Hogan carrying out major repairs to south Brighton’s Bridge Street bridge, an ongoing project.

Above right: Fulton Hogan team about to feed a long pipeline into the ground along Bowler Avenue in Ascot Reserve, north New Brighton, in mid-2013.

24 AUGUST 2014

More than 1000 kilometres (52 percent) of Christchurch’s urban roads needed rebuilding.

Some 140 (62 percent) of about 225 road and foot bridges and large culverts required repair, some of it major. More than 500 kilometres (30 percent) of the 1700 kilometres of wastewater pipes were damaged. And there were multiple instances of collapsed, broken or subsided walls (150 in Lyttelton alone), 12 kilometres of broken or weakened stopbanks, and a need for four kilometres of new stopbanks.

The alliance adopted a rigorous prioritisation to drive its works programme effectively. Generally roads are fixed only after all other infrastructure replacement or repairs are completed. Wastewater

is attended to first, as it is deepest underground.

Then come stormwater and freshwater pipes, and finally the road above.

However, the alliance’s seemingly simple prioritising becomes difficult through having to be coordinated with other rebuilding operations, such as telecommunications and power, so all the work can be done in a single dig. A prime example of coordination occurred in late April when pipe work in a central-city street was synchronised with the road’s closure for buildings to be demolished, to make way for a $53 million bus interchange.

It’s a complex task, made more so, Gibb says, by the nature and number of organisations involved in the alliance – three clients and five head

contractors engaged in a public-private, multiparty, collaborative organisation under an alliancebased commercial arrangement.

There are also 180-plus designers from 20 or more different design consultancies working with the five head contract companies, who do the work with their own employees as well as engaging 60plus separate subcontractors and suppliers.

To date about one-third of the delivery of work is self-delivery (head contractors’ employees) and two-thirds through subcontractors.

“Regardless of who is doing the work, all parties are effectively team members of the SCIRT virtual organisation,” Gibb says.

“The biggest challenge citywide is the repair of damaged core infrastructure networks – wastewater, freshwater, stormwater and roading – while still keeping these systems operational and the city functioning. The road network doubles as an infrastructure service corridor, so all works impact roads.”

From the outset the alliance has worked with the aim of creating a resilient infrastructure (able to withstand a 6.0–6.5 magnitude earthquake) that gives people security and confidence in the future of Christchurch. There have been several standout projects so far, including: • Ribbed, spiral-bound plastic lining by Fletcher Construction of brick-barrel storm and wastewater

pipes along the city’s main avenues – Fitzgerald and Moorhouse Avenues and Madras and Kilmore Streets. The lining was fed into the pipes through manholes, using robotic technology within the pipes. The advantages of lining rather than replacing these 19th-century but still very solid, one-metre-diameter pipes included a saving of $20 million, far less disruption to traffic flows and

Fletcher team reconstructing Park Terrace alongside Hagley Park in February.

AUGUST 2014 25

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

[ Above: McConnell Dowell’s major sheet piling in May for a new wastewater pump station near the Avon River, an ongoing project and (above right), some of the McConnell Dowell crew currently working on the Avon River-Manchester Street site.

26 AUGUST 2014

“Around 90 percent of our central-city work, which is only a fraction of the total work in the city, will be done by the end of 2014.“

businesses, a much shorter time needed to do the work, and much less waste.

• The extensively damaged Fitzgerald Avenue’s northbound lane, which suffered severe cracking up to two metres deep, close to the Avon River.

Downer used an innovative technique to stabilise the ground and adjacent riverside retaining wall that supports the road. Five hundred stone columns, each 600mm in diameter, were installed to a depth of 10 metres over a 200-metre length of the road. The stone columns were constructed by pushing a steel casing into the ground. The casing was then filled with gravel and removed, leaving the densified gravel behind. This made the surrounding ground stronger and improved groundwater drainage. Additional reconstruction on the project included the road surface, water and wastewater lines, a new footpath, and the southbound lane.

• Reconstruction by Downer of the Opawa Heathcote River bridge, part of the state-highway system and linking the city to the port of Lyttelton. The bridge carries 29,000 vehicles a day, including all heavy trucks to and from the port. Traffic continued to flow, with just seven weekend detours required as the abutments were rebuilt.

Four million vehicles drove over the structure during the 13 months of repairs, which required 400 cubic metres of concrete, 130 metres of pile casing and 80 tonnes of steel reinforcement.

The Christchurch floods earlier this year also brought out the best in SCIRT staff. Sites were

]

safely fenced off in the heavy winds and rain; residents were door-knocked and advised to keep away from flooded sites; diggers were used to rescue people from flooded homes and tow residents’ cars to higher ground; water was pumped out of Christchurch Hospital’s basement and equipment secured; and city council staff were helped in the job of inspecting retaining walls and bridges to ensure the structures posed no danger to the public.

The alliance team’s big push this year, and its most demanding to date according to Duncan Gibb, has been in the central business district. He says there is about $156 million worth of earthquake damage to horizontal infrastructure in the central city and as of June, 61 percent of the repairs had been completed.

“Around 90 percent of our central-city work, which is only a fraction of the total work in the city, will be done by the end of 2014. Central-city bridge repairs will take longer and will stretch into 2015,” he says.

“SCIRT is working with the forward-works viewer, an integrated, shared schedule of project rollouts of the Christchurch central development unit of CERA, Christchurch City Council, private developers, SCIRT, and utility providers. Land Management NZ managed the creation of this viewer.

“SCIRT is doing the enabling infrastructure works, which will build a solid and resilient foundation for the following vertical rebuild of Christchurch’s central city.”

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CONTRACTOR PROJECT

In mid-June the rebuild alliance team issued this progress report of its work city-wide: • Wastewater – 250 kilometres of pipe (38 percent) and 42 pump stations (49 percent) repaired or replaced; 1356 pressure wastewater tanks installed.

• Stormwater – 14 kilometres of pipe (52 percent) and four pump stations (33 percent) repaired or replaced.

• Freshwater – 44 kilometres of pipe (64 percent) and 21 pump stations and reservoirs (33 percent) repaired or replaced.

• Roading – 355,433 square metres of road (27 percent), 94 bridges and culverts (62 percent) and 44 retaining walls (18 percent) repaired or replaced; 78 percent of design, 41 percent of construction and 57 percent of central-city work completed; 45 percent of the whole SCIRT programme completed.

• Current work – 98 projects valued at $362.3 million are being designed; 66 projects totalling $260.4 million are being estimated; 128 projects valued at $658.6 million are under construction; 339 projects totalling $346.2 million are being handed back to asset owners.

Total physical-construction costs (a constant) are $1.633 billion.

Duncan Gibb says he and his team were unable to benefit from any of the reconstruction strategies used in the Napier post-earthquake rebuild 80 years ago because most of today’s technologies and products such as flexible pipes, trenchless excavation and pipelining were not available back then.

But he believes that the disasterrecovery framework for action of a public-private, multi-party, alliancebased commercial arrangement will have lasting benefits.

“It’s a framework for responding to disasters which could be used in many different disaster scenarios as immediate relief is replaced by recovery and reconstruction,” he says.

“This is being shared with many groups, and much wider than [in] New Zealand, through engineering and professional networks.”

28 AUGUST 2014

‘WHY I TOOK THE JOB’ When SCIRT alliance general manager Duncan Gibb gave a series of lectures recently to members of the Institute of Civil Engineers in the United Kingdom, he told them what persuaded him to take the demanding Christchurch post and what it has taught him. This is what he said.

IN APRIL 2011, with 30 years’ engineering experience, I found myself questioning why I had become an engineer. This followed an invitation to lead the rebuild of horizontal infrastructure in Christchurch following the devastating series of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. It meant moving overseas with my wife, away from our children, grandchildren, church, other support groups, as well as a secure role managing a successful business in Australia.

I had had some exposure to disasters through witnessing bushfire decimating rural communities in southern Australia and also in responding to flooding in Queensland. I had, however, no formal insight into the current body of knowledge around disaster management. I had not before considered the opportunities for engineers to impact disaster recovery outside of the more obvious and traditional engineering role in the physical reconstruction work.

During the last half of my career I had been involved directly in relationship or collaborative contracting arrangements which had provided insight into a process of building high-performance teams to deliver outstanding outcomes. This process had opened my eyes to the value that can be gained by engaging with other organisations and professional disciplines in service of achieving outcomes that I could not have imagined previously, let alone achieved.

What I enjoy about being an engineer is that we make things happen and get things done. Whether it is designing, constructing and maintaining buildings and infrastructure, or creating new and better solutions to problems which improve the quality of life of people across the world, engineers get things done. We achieve social or community outcomes through engineering.

Since early 2010 I have been continuously challenged and surprised by the ability of engineers to work with others to create innovative solutions to engineering, social, economic and public-health dilemmas faced in the midst and shadow of disaster. It has become clear to me that the collective power of individuals is exponentially increased through the intentional generation of collaboration and leadership.

After significant soul-searching I have realised that I, and probably most engineers, do what we do to make a difference to people. As it turns

out, everything in my professional career, the good and the bad, had prepared me for this new challenge … and at the centre of it all are people.

I recently took the time to review what had been accomplished in the rebuild of the horizontal infrastructure in Christchurch. This was prompted by the organisation receiving ad hoc acknowledgement for its work from international visitors, and by recognition received through a number of awards, including the Institute of Civil Engineers’ Brunel Medal in 2013, an unexpected honour.

I wanted to explore how SCIRT was measuring up in terms of disaster recovery and began to do some research. What I discovered is that SCIRT does have something to offer in terms of disaster recovery; our work is consistent with accepted practice and builds on this.

The Brunel international lecture has provided two significant opportunities for me. The first is to encourage engineers to intentionally seek to identify that which we don’t know that we don’t know. I believe that we have become oblivious to the opportunities to learn from and collaborate with other professionals to enable us to unlock new more powerful opportunities to serve our communities.

Second, I believe that when we look outside of our comfortable seat of experience we can identify significant opportunities to use our skills and knowledge to benefit others in harnessing opportunities that they do not know how to deal with. This framework for action developed out of engineering project management and, extended through collaboration with human resource, communications, economic, leadership development and humanitarian relief professionals, has potential to unlock a significant improvement in both planning for, and response to, crises across the globe.

I agree with the view that engineers would gain from the development of modules in the engineering curriculum to enable the engineers of the future to be better equipped to deliver effective and holistic solutions to the real-world challenges society faces in the 21st century.

It is also clear that we cannot achieve the potential that stands before us on our own. It is through collaborating with others to harness our complementary skills and abilities that possibility will be unlocked.

Collectively we are stronger!

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CONTRACTOR FEATURE

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Morris with a 1939 Ford Ferguson 9N from 1939, restored in its original colour.

The inexhaustible Morris McFall Former Contractors’ Federation president Morris McFall may be nearly 80 but, as GAVIN RILEY discovered recently, he’s not putting his feet up. Morris has restored an impressive collection of vintage tractors, cars and stationary engines, as well as making possible a rehab centre for the disabled.

FROM HIS EARLY DAYS of toiling on his Irish father’s Te Awamutu dairy farm before and after school, Morris McFall has always tackled hard work head-on.

In a crowded life he has been a dairy farmer, a Waikato rugby rep-squad loose forward, the founder and head of the McFall Enterprises civil construction company, a Contractors’ Federation president (1988-90), a Contrafed Publishing co-director, a Waikato regional councillor, and chairman (which he still is) of the bulk-fuel delivery business he set up.

Morris will be 80 next January – time, one would think, for a leisurely life of armchair and slippers, especially as he’s survived two bouts of prostate cancer.

But, no, the ever-active Morris is president of the Mt Maunganui Rotary club, which meets weekly, and he also pursues two projects with the energy and enthusiasm which characterised all his past undertakings.

One is a vintage tractors, classic cars and

stationary engines museum and the other is a rehabilitation centre and gymnasium for the disabled and post-surgery patients, both housed adjacent to McFall Fuel.

About seven years ago, Morris was wondering what to do with his unaccustomed spare time. Chronic bronchitis and a bad back ruled out physical activity. So he set up a “bloke’s shed” because; “I’ve always been interested in things with nuts, bolts and wheels and using my hands and my head.”

He bought old tractors, cars and stationary engines from a “bush telegraph” network of people all over the country and set about restoring them to their original condition – no easy task as some were little better than rusted wrecks.

“Everything I’ve got is back to full working order,” he says.

“I have 20 or 21 tractors going back to 1926, half a dozen classic cars from the 1960s and ’70s including a Ford Thunderbird, Cadillac, Studebaker, Mercedes and Jaguar, 10 or more

1. Morris and his collection of petrol bowsers.

2. Stationary engines, all in working order.

3. The restored tractors are neatly lined up on each side of the museum. In the foreground (left) is the oldest stationary engine on view, from 1911.

4. International McCormick Farmall B from 1947, which Morris has kept since his farming days.

5. The oldest in the collection, a 1926 Hart Parr.

6. A McCormick-Deering W12 model from 1937.

7. & 8. Before and after shots of Morris’ late father’s 1965 David Brown 990, which was found abandoned.

AUGUST 2014 31

CONTRACTOR FEATURE

The rehab centre and gym for the disabled, believed to be the only facility of its kind in the country.

restored stationary engines going back to 1911, and 10 or so vintage petrol bowsers.

“The object was to have a range of what was representative of the early days of transition from horses to agricultural tractors. Family members have helped.

Our fuel storage company in Te Awamutu has a bake oven, which provides heat treatment for automotive painting. Two grandsons, who have served engineering apprenticeships, do this.”

Morris’ tractors include an International McCormick Farmall B he has had since his farming days, a replica of the Nuffield 10/60 which in 1965 was the first new tractor he purchased, and a David Brown 990 Implematic his father bought new in 1965.

Along the way Morris’ bloke’s shed has morphed into a museum. About 18 months ago he increased his display space by 50 percent and it’s full again – which prompts the question, where does he go from here?

“I want to keep it on a reasonably small

footprint with a good range of tractors and specific equipment. It was something I knew something about, so I specialised in those. I’ve had offers of vehicles and trucks but haven’t taken them up.

“If I put them [the tractors] on the market a lot of them would go overseas and would fetch tens of thousands of dollars – 10 to 20 times their original value.”

But that’s not the plan. Interest groups have started to visit Morris’ collection and he’s hoping it will be taken over as a public facility when Tauranga sets up its talked-about transport museum.

Meanwhile, he says he’s kept busy five hours a day maintaining the equipment in working order and is seriously contemplating hiring a retired person to help him in the task.

Morris’ involvement in the rehabilitation centre and gym for the disabled stems from a near-fatal accident 12 years ago when his second son Bryce’s quad bike flipped in a forest near

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Rotorua, leaving Bryce paralysed from the neck down and needing around-theclock care.

After three months in Middlemore Hospital, including eight weeks in an induced coma, he had treatment at the Otara and Burwood spinal units. Despite being told he would never be able to operate a wheelchair, the determined Bryce not only succeeded in learning to do so but, with family support, now drives a specially adapted car and a motor home and is very proactive on behalf of people like himself who require specialist help.

Bryce, now 51, moved from his Waikato farm to Mt Maunganui after the accident, and Morris and his wife Hilary followed suit to be near their son. Nearly three years ago Morris paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to erect a building next to his museum and leased it to a Whakatane charitable trust for use as the now-thriving rehab centre and gym.

The facility has a membership of 120, 80 percent of whom are disabled (able-

bodied people are permitted to join to help swell the trust’s income). The gym is staffed by three dedicated trainers with specialist qualifications, one of whom, Aaron Balsom, told Contractor: “It doesn’t feel like work.” The trainers receive referrals from neuro-physiotherapists at local hospitals and are thus able to tailor fitness programmes to individual needs.

Morris believes there is no similar facility anywhere in New Zealand. He considers it performs an invaluable service in helping keep wheelchairbound accident victims like Bryce out of hospital, by improving their fitness and health, and it angers him that the work has to be funded by a charitable organisation.

“The health service still doesn’t recognise the value of such a facility, so it has to be run completely independently without any health-service support,” he says.

“I feel strongly that a charitable trust is coping with limited funds and can only do so much. The health service doesn’t even recommend patients to the rehabilitation centre – the neuro-physios do that themselves.”

Morris says the centre’s café has become an important meeting area where disabled people can socialise and discuss how they are managing their disability. The gym contains expensive top-brand equipment, which has been factory-adapted to suit the needs of the disabled. And the building houses nine treatment rooms that are used by organisations tending to the needs of people suffering from illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple sclerosis.

“No disabled person who has gone to this centre has abandoned it. People say they feel safe because they’re looked after,” Morris says.

“I’ve provided the centre to the charitable trust at a modest rent after I provided it rent-free for the first 12 months. It’s a three-year lease and as far as I’m concerned it’s probably there forever.

“I hope in time that movers and shakers in the health service will recognise its value.”

Morris McFall may be nearing 80, but he’s still doing what he’s always done – keeping busy and, in the process, helping people.

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AUGUST 2014 33

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

HALFWAY THERE TOM CLARKE visits the site of the huge

Great North Interchange, a crucial part of the Auckland ring road motorway system, as it nears the halfway point of construction.

IT’S NOT JUST THE 102,000 vehicles that pass beneath the construction site each day on the existing motorway and roading system – there is also the issue of building new massive infrastructure in close proximity to a sensitive marine environment.

The expanding interchange project with its four soaring ramps grows more massive every day and, when finished, will be an integral part of the $1.4 billion Waterview Connection project linking the Northwestern Motorway (SH16) and the Southeastern Motorway (SH20) via the 2.4 kilometre-long Waterview tunnels, also under construction.

Constructing four multi-lane ramps over an already busy motorway and existing interchange – and dealing with a site with extremes of terrain – has meant pushing engineering boundaries and employing some innovative techniques and methods not normally used in this country.

The entire Waterview project is being handled by the Well-Connected Alliance, which includes the

34 AUGUST 2014

Some of the spans on ramp four are at the limit for Super T precast beams, because of the need to position support pylons within the existing motorway lanes.

AUGUST 2014 35

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

Transport Agency, Fletcher Construction, McConnell Dowell, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Beca Infrastructure, Tonkin & Taylor and the Japanese construction company, Obayashi.

The interchange project itself is under the supervision project management of Scottish-born Lynne Makepeace, who has extensive international project management experience, including stints in Britain, Egypt and Lesotho in Southern Africa. She joined the interchange project at its outset in 2012.

Any project of this size is going to have its difficulties, she says, and adding to the complexity of construction are the strict environmental conditions imposed by the resource consent for the project, which spans over the environmentally sensitive Oakley Creek, and sits adjacent to the Waitemata Harbour.

Makepeace says because the viaducts span over the creek, it was necessary to bridge across it, which meant putting up temporary staging.

“The resource consent put a limit on

how many temporary staging piles we could put in the CMA [coastal marine area] and also the plan area of the staging to lessen the impact on the environment.

“It was quite tricky to get the permanent design settled, then get the temporary works for the staging sorted out so we stayed within those limits.”

Monthly inspections are made of the staging and the coastal marine area by the Coastal Consents and Compliance Department of Auckland City, which also makes weekly inspections of other

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parts of the site.

The project also has strict guidelines on areas that can be opened at any one time, particularly in winter, and that is also subject to Council approval. There is a dedicated manager on-site to advise on environmental matters.

There is also a manager on the project to advise on traffic management, which is handled in close association with the adjacent Causeway Upgrade Project, another part of the overall Western Ring Route, which involves widening and raising 4.5 kilometres of motorway between the Great North Road interchange and the Te Atatu interchange.

A gantry called Dennis The 1.7 kilometres of bridge structure involves a total of 53 spans and the placement of 279 beams, cast at a purpose-built factory at East Tamaki and trucked to the site at night time.

The Super T beams are 1500mm deep, vary in length from 30 to 36 metres, and weigh between 55 and 69 tonnes.

Some of the spans on ramp four are at the limit for Super T precast beams,

because of the need to position support columns within the existing motorway lanes.

This limitation, along with the angle of the bridge spanning over the existing motorway, has meant that tabletop structures have been used on three of the columns instead of the usual crossheads.

Another issue has been the amount of reinforcing being used in the tabletops.

Their height and complexity means they are heavily reinforced, which means the work site at the head of the columns has become very congested.

The difficulty of access to the actual construction site because of the existing motorway also led to another piece of innovation by the construction – the use of a purpose-built self-launching gantry to position the beams.

The gantry, dubbed Dennis in memory of a site chippie who died of cancer last year (see sidebar story), was built by the Italian engineering firm Deal – a global supplier of bridge and viaduct construction equipment.

The 98-metre-long, 140-tonne gantry was shipped to New Zealand in bits and the trusses assembled onsite by the local

workforce, with the finishing touches to its electrical and mechanical components handled by a Deal engineer flown in from Italy. It is similar to the gantry used on the recent Newmarket Viaduct replacement but a lot smaller – the Newmarket gantry weighed in at around 600 tonnes.

Makepeace says it is a unique bit of equipment, designed specifically to fit the physical constraints of the design and the parameters of the beams.

“The terrain on the site is very variable, going from the bottom of the creek which is 15 metres below the rest of the access roads,” she says.

“If we wanted to use mobiles we’d have to do a tandem lift because the beams are up to 69 tonnes each, and that would mean we’d have to upgrade and enlarge all the staging which we weren’t allowed to do because of the resource consent conditions.

“And if we need to have closures of the motorway, that can only happen between 11pm to about 4am – by the time you set up two cranes and got organised for the lift, you’d have about 20 minutes left to do the actual lift.

“With the gantry we can travel out to

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AUGUST 2014 37

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

Painted for a good cause The Italian designed self-launching gantry has been named Dennis, in memory of an onsite chippie, Dennis Wereta, who died from cancer in 2013 at the age of 32.

His death came at the time when the team was looking for a name for the huge gantry, and it was agreed to use his name in memory of the highly popular and lively chippie, and to select the Cancer Society as the charity supported by the Well-Connected Alliance and its staff.

Lynne Makepeace says the gantry was painted in Cancer Society yellow to promote and support the work of the society.

the span immediately prior to the one we’re placing and be ready to place it as soon as the closure is underway, which means we save a lot of time.”

Currently the gantry is working on ramp three where it had done 11 beams as at the beginning of July, with 71 still to be placed scheduled to be completed by this Christmas. After that Dennis will move back to ramp four to complete that before moving on to ramp two.

Another problem has arisen with the piling. Underlying the top surface is a layer of basalt up to six metres deep, some 38 AUGUST 2014

A number of fundraising events have been organised by staff on the site, including site visits and talks by Cancer Society specialists, a staff quiz night at the Point Chevalier RSA and a team of site representatives taking part in the Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.

Other fundraising events are planned for the future.

Currently Dennis is working on ramp three and it is expected to have completed laying the beams on that by Christmas, after which it will move to ramp four, and then finally onto ramp two.

of which is quite fractured, which means that foundations can’t always be laid on top, in which case it is necessary to drill through the rock. The piles are 2.1 metres in diameter, so to get through the basalt means stitch drilling the rock to try and break the rock up for the 2.1 metre barrel.

Makepeace says these problems require additional engineering design, which is done on site by the design team, but it all adds time and cost to the project.

When completed in early 2017, it will include 1.7 kilometres of viaduct

that will enable traffic to link directly from the Southern Motorway at Manukau with the Northwestern Motorway, providing an alternative route between Manukau and Albany, enabling traffic to bypass the inner-city Spaghetti Junction interchange.

When the interchange and the tunnels are completed and linked, it will also provide a badly needed direct motorway connection between the CBD and Auckland Airport, and between the CBD and the rapidly developing northwest and southwest suburbs.

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

EARTHMOVING

THROUGH THE CLOUD Goodman Contracting is using a new internet-based surveying system while building the Kapiti Expressway that it says has revolutionised the way it moves material.

RICHARD SILCOCK explains.

40 AUGUST 2014

Stan Goodman, managing director of family owned and Waikanae-based business, Goodman Contracting, says its new GNSS/Cloud based internet system works like magic when it comes to shifting sand, soil and bog peat to make way for the new, and at times, controversial Kapiti Expressway.

The $630 million expressway, which, when complete, will run 18 kilometres from Mackay’s Crossing in the south to Peka Peka in the north, is a part of NZTA’s Roads of National Significance (RoNS) from Wellington Airport to Levin. This section is being built to free-up traffic through the rapidly expanding coastal towns of Raumati, Paraparaumu, Waikanae and Peka Peka. When complete it will be made up of 400,000 square

metres of road surfacing and include 18 bridges.

Phase one, the Mackay’s to Peka Peka section of the project started in February this year and is expected to be finished by the end of 2017.

Goodman is the earthmoving subcontractor for this phase and is working with the M2PP Alliance, made up of Fletchers, Higgins Construction, Beca and NZTA. It won the earthmoving contract because of its experience and local knowledge of the difficult ground conditions (sand, peat bog and a high water table) and because, together with Fletchers, it was able to bring groundbreaking survey management to the project using newly developed computer and GNSS/Cloud based technology.

Will Newall, survey manager for the Alliance,

Background: Computer generated image of an area in the Peka Peka sand hills, showing topographical data taken directly from a D8 bulldozer of an excavated trench (centre) and batters on either side. The yellow areas represent the lowest ground levels, and red the highest.

Left: A Goodman, 45-tonne Hyundai excavator at work extracting sand and peat down to five metres below the high water table. A Trimble GNSS/ Cloud antenna transponder is mounted at the rear.

AUGUST 2014 41

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

Computer generated geospatial condensed print-out showing a section of the peat excavation near the southern end of the project. The colour represents the ground levels with the orange being the lowest and the green the highest.

In-cab of D8 bulldozer showing mounting of monitor below instruments.

Goodman excavators loading peat onto dump trucks north of Waikanae.

42 AUGUST 2014

and Stan Goodman worked together to develop and refine a method of tracking and providing 2D and 3D imagery of the planned carriageway route using the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), which links to American, Russian, Japanese and Chinese satellites orbiting the earth.

“Essentially, this form of navigation tracking has been in existence for some time and was developed by the military for their aircraft and shipping,” says Newall.

“It has since been adapted and utilised in a number of civil applications and recently in civil engineering.

“We specified our requirements to worldwide geospatial equipment provider Trimble and worked with their Christchurch office to provide the necessary digital componentry and put a package together comprising rugged

antenna/transponder units through to in-cab, tablet-like computer monitors for construction measurement and site positioning. In effect what we and Trimble have done was to take existing technology and apply it to earthmoving.

“It works like this.

“We take the expressway designs and by applying this technology we are able to convert them into fully integrated 2 and 3 dimensional, computer generated colour topographical models which show all the highs and lows of the physical terrain compressed into cross-sections, long sections and plan view overlays.

“This information is relayed to the operators of the heavy bulldozers, scrapers and excavators working at the site via their in-cab monitor so that they can see the required levels and follow the designated route and excavate within a 2030mm tolerance without having to follow any

CONTRACTOR PROJECT

Right: Computer generated illustration of the area around Poplar Avenue, Raumati (mid-left), showing the different layers of preload material on the new carriageway (as distinguished by the ‘colour slabs’) that were effectively built using the GNSS/Cloud guidance system mounted on graders. SH1 is in the foreground; the blue lines indicate where a double roundabout will be built with on and off ramps.

Above: View looking north, showing the carriageway excavation and preload compaction material. The current SH1 and electrified railway line is to the right of the picture.

Inset: Close-up of a Trimble SCS900 monitor showing a grader and grading level (red line) on screen.

Above right: An excavator working from a raft. Note the GNSS/ Cloud antenna transponder to the right of the cab.

44 AUGUST 2014

survey or construction pegs.

“As work progresses this information is relayed back to the site office so that a ‘realtime’ up-to-date picture of the site excavation is provided for the engineers and survey team to monitor progress and measure the amount of removed soil,” says Newall.

“This ability to relay this information in this way is a New Zealand first.”

Around three million cubic metres of sand, soil and peat is expected to be shifted by the time this part of the project is completed. Currently work is being carried out at the southern end, near the intersection of SH1 and Poplar Avenue at Raumati, and north of the Waikanae River towards Peka Peka.

“We are paid by the cubic metre,” says Goodman.

“Having this tool is a revolution for us, as it provides an extremely accurate figure of the sand, soil and peat we actually move. In effect it gives us a birds-eye view of progress, eliminates any reworking, avoids extra passes

and cuts, and provides accuracy and efficiency.

Most importantly it provides a system of grade checking, quality and measurement control and is proving to improve safety on site.

“It has also proven to be simple to learn and use and our operators usually pick it up after only a few hours of training.

“All our operators love it.”

The Goodmans earthmoving business was started in 1963 by Rick and Tony Goodman, and was taken over by their three sons and daughter in the 1980s. Twelve of their heavy earthmoving machines, from excavators to graders that are being used on the project are fitted with the Trimble GNSS/Cloud system at a cost of around $80,000 per unit.

“With this technology we have some of the world’s smartest diggers,” says Stan.

“It’s absolutely magic and has proven to be a great success especially with a project of this size. It has enabled us to work smarter, faster and more efficiently both onsite and in the office.”

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ROADING the aggregate issue

In the third of our series on roading, LAWRENCE SCHAFFLER looks at the aggregate issue in terms of pavement quality.

QUARRIES ARE SET to become part of a new, national rating system following a recently-completed NZTA aggregate-testing programme.

Aimed at identifying aggregates that prevent ‘shear’ in a road pavement’s base layers, the programme will also see the standard M4 specification modified. The testing programme was implemented following NZTA’s concerns about the incidence of shear in a number of pavements – particularly in high-grade pavements where shear wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Much of our conventional road design,” explains John Donbavand, NZTA’s National Pavements manager) “is geared to maintaining the sub-grade – the soil right at the bottom of the pavement structure.

“In particular, we want to prevent ‘rutting’ in the sub-grade

“We know a number of pavements are suffering from shear, which suggests that while the M4 specification meets most of our pavement requirements, it doesn’t cover all of them.”

46 AUGUST 2014

– caused by the load from continuous traffic. If a structure is not well-designed the loading deforms the sub-grade. In turn, that deformation transfers upwards, creating uneven areas throughout the sub-base and base layers. These ultimately present as cracked, raised sections in the actual road surface, leading to the premature failure of the pavement.

“Technically, rutting forces the aggregate to moves sideways [called a ‘shove’]. We’ve always believed that roads built with aggregates that meet our M4 specification would be strong enough to withstand ‘shoving’ – eliminating any chance of shear.

“Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We know a number of pavements are suffering from shear, which suggests that while the M4 specification meets most of our pavement requirements, it doesn’t cover all of them.”

Shear is prevented, he says, when the base layer aggregate provides a superior interlocking structure. Aggregates that perform poorly and break down are susceptible to shearing. The NZTA investigation proved that in some high-load cases, the M4 base layer aggregate is not always strong enough to prevent shoving and shear.

The tests Different samples of M4 aggregates from quarries around the country were subjected to a battery of Repeated Load Triaxial Tests in a laboratory.

These involved placing the samples into a ‘cell’ (a tall

cylinder), and applying a surrounding load along its full length.

Every sample received six compression loads (from the top) – each representing 50,000 cycles.

“The cycles,” says Donbavand, “were applied at a frequency of 4Hz – four times a second – to simulate the ‘pulse’ of actual traffic. Studies of the resultant deformation clearly identified which aggregates were more likely to shear. In effect, the tests identified indifferent, good – and better – aggregates.”

Validating the test results was tackled at the NZTA’s CAPTIF (Canterbury Accelerator Pavement Testing Indoor Facility), and the entire programme, he says, will lead to a modified M4 specification.

Aggregate quality While aggregates are sourced from various rocks types (including basalt, granite and greywacke), not all aggregates – even within the same rock group – are created equal.

“Our M4,” Donbavand points out, “is typically used for a pavement’s base layer. It specifies diverse requirements such as crushing and weathering resistance, as well as the number of ‘broken faces’ (facets) which promotes the interlocking structure between the stones. And some aggregates are better than others in meeting this latter criteria.”

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CONTRACTOR TECHNOLOGY

one another. In effect, the testing programme has pinpointed the quarries which offer the “best” aggregate for a revised M4 specification.

NTZA has begun discussions with quarry owners about the new specification, and hopes to introduce it within a few months. It will see the organisation being more selective in terms of which quarries are used to source the aggregate.

Will all new roads use the new specification?

This has still to be decided, says Donbavand.

“Not all roads have the same load profile, and rather than a blanket specification for all roads, it’s conceivable that only the high-volume pavements (motorways and state highways) will need the extra specification.”

Currently, he points out, there is a provision for some flexibility in the M4 specification.

“In some instances contractors have difficulty in sourcing the premium M4 aggregate – maybe because there isn’t a suitable quarry nearby and it would be too expensive to import it from further afield – or perhaps the road design doesn’t require a particularly high loading specification.

“In such cases, we have our M5 specification – and we use it in certain areas of the country.”

The bottom line is that contractors may soon find themselves forced to source aggregate from a particular quarry to meet a road’s design specification.

Inevitably, that might require higher transport costs (and premium prices for a premium product?) factored into the tender process.

48 AUGUST 2014

Aggregates While M4 is NZTA’s premium specification, there are actually nine different aggregate grades used primarily for the base layer in the pavement structure – all created by the quarries to precise requirements.

They not only use rock of diverse origins (basalt, greywacke, granite) but the stone size ranges from 37.5mm down to 75 microns. Each aggregate comprises a mix of the different sizes.

A pavement’s base layer (typically around 400mm deep) uses a more precision-engineered aggregate than the sub-base layer (usually around 500mm deep) on which it rests. The sub-base layer comprises larger stones and is not a premium aggregate.

NZTA’s testing programme revealed that the maximum shear force occurs in the base layer, typically around 80mm down.

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CONTRACTOR COMMENT

Working with local authorities will bring benefits JEREMY SOLE CEO, NEW ZEALAND CONTRACTORS’ FEDERATION

I WAS AT A MEETING with the Construction Industry Council and MBIE recently discussing a range of construction industry issues as a part of the Ministry’s setting-up recommendations to the incoming minister around work priorities.

One of the interesting observations that came through was that the consulting engineering community has capacity to service only around 60 percent of the currently-projected national work pipeline. While this might bode well for the consultants’ profitability, it signals a potential issue for the contracting industry if there is limited capacity to get projects to the bid stages or ‘shovel ready’.

Anecdotally this shortage in engineering capacity is first hitting the local government space as some of the larger firms choose to focus on sectors with greater certainty and perhaps the promise of greater returns with less risk. This is evident in Wellington where Council has recently relaxed its requirements on the specialisation of consulting firms wanting to bid for engineering work on some of its civil projects so it can bring more capacity into the system.

There are bound to be multiple drivers of this issue including the commonly articulated problem of inappropriate spending (currently a point of debate) and the subsequent pressure on Councils to cap rates increases; and the well heralded changes in urban population demographics. This last issue has featured in the Road Maintenance Task Force deliberations and again in the Ministerial Local Government Infrastructure Advisory Group report, and yet again in a recent Dominion Post article covering a report released by the Royal Society.

One thing I have learnt about local government while in this role is that

50 AUGUST 2014

drivers of any issue are usually dynamic and complex. We have observed and commented many times on the effects of poor procurement practices and inappropriate transfer of risk and the cost of inappropriate or unconstructable designs or specifications at one level – and then there is often politicisation of the Councils’ infrastructure priorities in some instances as well. And of course the demographic changes and their effects on the rating base in some areas.

It has often puzzled me that some local authorities are so territorial about their local civil infrastructure on the basis of protecting the investment generations of their local ratepayers have put into it. It is interesting that as a nation we don’t think twice at taking a national view on the provision of funds for education, health and policing, justice, tourism, roading and many other services because we recognise the wider community of interest and how the national view benefits everyone.

But when it comes to essential Local Authority civil infrastructure we all of a sudden become parochial and resist any potential ‘interference’. Provision of local civil infrastructure is essential to the primary production sectors and regional communities and both of these are important to the economic and social wellbeing of New Zealand – arguably more so than in the urban areas.

It is this parochialism that often gets in the way of scaling up the council planning functions to a level where they have the capability and capacity to effectively plan and manage their infrastructure needs and maintenance.

Having achieved this scale they would be able to build more senior and experienced asset management teams and bring back efficiencies that might make the long term prospects of living in provincial areas more desirable and economically and socially

“It has often puzzled me that some local authorities are so territorial about their local civil infrastructure on the basis of protecting the investment generations of their local ratepayers have put into it.” feasible for those who currently see the future only in the larger urban areas.

NZTA recently made significant changes to its asset management functions having realised it had outsourced a considerable proportion of specialist knowledge and expertise to the point it had degraded its own capability. Many local authorities have followed similar paths and some of those will now be re-evaluating that decision in the light of where it has left them now the holders of knowledge and expertise are finding other sectors more appealing and thus departing for the new gold fields. That’s probably a bit too dramatic but there is a degree of truth in it.

So I guess, (finally getting to the point), this is a time where the contracting industry needs – more than any other time – to get alongside its local authorities to understand and work with them in addressing the workflow issues for the benefit of all the stakeholders.

We have been waiting several years for the economy to turn around and the last thing we, and our clients, need right now is to have the recovery come to a spluttering standstill for the local contracting communities.

COMMENT CONTRACTOR

Moving right along CHRIS OLSEN CEO, ROADING NEW ZEALAND

BY THE TIME you get to read this column Roading NZ and NZ Contractors’ Federation members will have voted on whether the two organisations should merge into a new contracting industry association with a new brand, vision and executive council. I believe this merger makes good sense as it will build on the strengths of both organisations and will increase the credibility and influence of the industry by speaking with one voice.

At this stage there are positive indications that overall this move will be supported.

Should the merger to a new organisation go ahead, this will be my last column for Contractor as I have decided not to put my hat in the ring for the new CEO position because I believe the organisation will benefit from a new face with new ideas.

Since this may be my last column, I thought I’d look back to when I took up this position in July 2000. At that time, Roading NZ was the Pavement and Bitumen Contractors Association (PBCA).

So what was I writing about in my columns back then, and how have things changed over the past 14 years?

Looking back to 2000/01 the topics in my columns were not that much different from those now. Back then PBCA members were concerned about the need to make progress as an industry on: • Contracts (no one knew what procurement was back then) • Health and safety • Training • Environmental issues • Technical developments • Industry advocacy.

Under contracts, the three big issues were the subjectivity of tender evaluations, the need for the engineer to the contract to be independent, and that the Competitive Pricing Procedures (CPPs), set by what is now NZTA, had resulted in unsustainably fierce competition, because the CPPs’ sole objective was maximising

Looking back over these past 14 years or so it’s clear that there has been a huge lift in the professionalism of the contracting sector and in its ability to deliver improved value for money to its clients. competition irrespective of value for money. As a result, industry training had all but ceased.

There was a lot of talk about the need for industry self regulation in health and safety and to kick this off the PBCA held a national forum of its key players to identify collectively for its members the top health and safety risks, hazards and controls. These then became the foundation of Operate Safe.

In the training area, a huge effort was being made to carry out an industry training needs analysis to align industry qualifications with contractor needs.

Other work focused on ensuring that those contractors who trained were rewarded through the tender process and there was also a focus on making the industry more attractive.

Up-skilling the contracting industry in technical expertise had begun through my predecessor, Dr Bryan Pidwerbesky, establishing the Bitumen and Asphalt committees, but there were many more technical committees that needed to be established and they needed to prove their credibility.

In hindsight these initiatives proved to be an excellent foundation for the contracting industry to build on. Some of the positives that have developed over the years from these foundations include: • A tender evaluation qualification and training • Procurement that focuses on value for money and not solely on competition for competition’s sake • A $1.6 million “Slow Down Around Roadworks” campaign that substantially

reduced motorist accidents and fatalities at roadwork sites • Newer forms of contracts such as hybrids, alliances, performance-based, fence-to-fence and collaborative • 10,000 Operate Safe training cards issued with 110 Operate Safe accredited contractors who have a 30% improvement in health and safety performance over others in the construction sector • 20 technical committees and sub committees involving over 70 members’ employees contributing in kind over $500,000 per annum to the sector • A very successful co-strategy with five government departments to grow the industry by 40% from 2003 to 2005 to accommodate a capital expenditure increase in roading from $300 million per annum to $1 billion per annum • A health and safety competency framework for the construction sector • The development of a Civil Trades Regime.

Looking back over these past 14 years or so it’s clear that there has been a huge lift in the professionalism of the contracting sector and in its ability to deliver improved value for money to its clients. I’m sure the next 10 years will continue this trend.

Should this be my last column, I’d like to thank Contractor magazine readers for their many positive comments about my columns over the years. I trust you have all enjoyed them and found them both interesting and informative. Hopefully they have encouraged debate and thereby increased the professionalism of the contracting industry.

AUGUST 2014 51

CONTRACTOR BEST BUSINESS PRACTICE

Growing pains DEAN JOHNSON, FINANCIAL CONSULTANT

FOR MANY BUSINESSES the Christchurch rebuild has resulted in a rapid growth opportunity. There are obvious upsides to such growth, but beware the pitfalls that could detract from the rewards of that growth. And while Christchurch is a topical case in point, the risks and rewards of sudden growth apply to any boom situation.

Stay in control It’s not uncommon for company owners to make a step-increase in revenue, then lose control of their business – witness the number of Christchurch building firms which have gone into liquidation recently. Not all revenue is profitable.

In Christchurch much of the increased activity is at very tightly controlled prices, as those who hold the purse strings are understandably keen to prevent runaway inflation. Agents representing central and/or local government (Fletcher EQR, SCIRT) are legally obliged to demonstrate value for money. For work of this nature to be profitable, you will have to be even more lean and efficient than you already were, while remaining fully compliant with quality, health, safety and environmental requirements.

It might be a question of scale; if margins are slim, you need scale to be profitable and, for some, it’s a step too far.

The size of your business in terms of numbers of employees can be a critical factor. There is a ‘difficult’ range of between about 25 and 50 employees where it can be very hard to be efficient. At 25 staff or less it is relatively straightforward to retain tight control. At more than 50 staff it’s viable to put in place another layer of support and supervision. But that middle stage can be awkward. There can be a step-increase in the overhead and support requirements, with only a linear increase in revenue. Many businesses struggle in this range.

Some will try to benefit from the growth without structuring the support appropriately. This can appear to work in the short term, but control quietly slips away. Then trouble creeps in. The owner/ manager is spread too thin. Quality issues

52 AUGUST 2014

start to arise. Costs are not tracked. Jobs start to lose money. But you’re busier than ever and there just isn’t time to address the root causes. Consider the situation where you are paying $25 per hour for your labour, and charging out at $40 per hour. You may be losing money.

By the time you factor in holiday pay, sick pay, ACC, Kiwisaver, training time, training expenses, personal protection equipment, other on-costs and the big one – down time – are you making a profit? Productivity, or conversely, down time, can be a killer. Add to the mix the fact you are growing – taking on new staff.

They have to be trained and inducted into your operations and practices. It’s unlikely they will immediately be fully productive. Increasing staff in small numbers is much easier. They can be readily absorbed into the operations with sufficient experience and support around them to be effective. But taking on a whole new crew is a different story.

How will you ensure they comply with your business practices? Have you got the supervisors to direct and support them? What will happen if you don’t?

Don’t become the business owner who is working longer and harder than ever before, getting frustrated, dealing with more problems, feeling out of control – and making less money.

Back-office processes Are your back-office processes adequate to handle the increase in activity? Is your data collection in the field sufficiently robust? A breakdown anywhere in the process can lead to revenue leakage. The work is done, the cost has been incurred, but the client is never charged. It’s scary.

It happens. Processes under pressure from rapid growth are fertile ground for missed revenue.

Clients can be relied on to be diligent at picking up over-charging. With undercharging, not so much.

At the same time, manage your suppliers and subcontractors. The last thing you want is a nasty shock from a large unexpected bill. Your processes and people must be able to manage your commitments.

And get your claims in on time. Clients don’t like nasty surprises either. Claim in a timely fashion and the entire process will run more smoothly. Issues can be resolved promptly rather than fester and escalate. If you’re a subcontractor, it’s just as important. Make the head contractors’ lives easier and they’ll love you for it.

At all times, remember CFIMITYM – Cash Flow Is More Important Than Your Mother.

What happens when it’s all over?

The elephant in the room. You’ve geared up, you’ve put systems and processes and supervision and support in place.

You’re driving efficiency and enjoying the benefits of growth. The company is leaner, stronger, more robust than it was. What happens after the boom? When things start to go a bit quiet? Can you replace that revenue by diversifying? All your competitors are planning on grabbing their piece of the Diversify-Pie as well.

Eventually someone, if not everyone, is going to miss out. Be prepared. If you can’t replace the revenue, have a strategy to manage the downward slope.

In closing Have a strategy. Enjoy your growth. Put in place great people, processes and systems. Use the opportunity to become stronger and smarter and optimise the opportunity in front of you. Maximise the returns on your efforts by doing the right things, not just more of the same things.

And think about putting resources into controls and support for the business instead of that new Ford Ranger.

• DEAN JOHNSON has over 25 years’ financial and commercial experience across a range of industries and segments, including infrastructure construction and maintenance. He was the chief financial officer for City Care for six years until late 2013 and now has his own company supporting businesses with process improvements, change management, business planning, governance and compliance, and mergers and acquisitions.

LIFECARE CONTRACTOR

The importance of lung function tests JANET BROTHERS MANAGING DIRECTOR, LIFE CARE CONSULTANTS LUNG FUNCTION TESTS are part of annual health checks Life Care provides for many contractors in New Zealand.

The lung function test is important as it identifies the ‘health’ of the lungs and the effects of ‘irritants’ ie, chemicals, smoking, asbestos etc.

Along with other health assessments we need to monitor the effects of the irritants workers may be exposed to.The initial reading is important, however with ongoing annual assessments the trends over a number of years add real value to the employee and the employer.

The machine used for lung function assessments is a spirometer and the two main results from an occupational health perspective are the FVC and the FEV1.

The instructions given to perform an effective assessment are: “blow out as

hard as you can and for as long as you can”.

The FVC is the forced vital capacity and this is why we instruct the participant to blow out for as long as they can – “till you feel as if you have no breath left”. It measures the ‘size’ of the lungs – how much air can fit into them.

The FEV1 is the forced expiratory volume ie, how much air can be blown out in the first second. This reading measures the strength of the lungs and the effectiveness of the airways. This is why the instructions include “blow out as hard as you can”.

Typically, an asthmatic will have a normal FVC as the condition doesn’t reduce the capacity of the lungs. However, they may well have a reduced FEV1 as the airways have restriction so the ability to blow out strongly is reduced.

The spirometers used have an in-built

The truth of the matter

computer which requires the age, gender, weight and height of the individual and determines the predicted volume and strength ie, FVC and FEV1. The results are then recorded as a percentage of the prediction.

If both of the results are 100 percent, the lung capacity and the strength are good, and this is what is expected.

If they are, say 124 percent and 118 percent, it indicates the person is fit and their lungs are healthy.

If the results are 74 percent and 78 percent, the lungs are not as good as they should be and we will refer the person to their GP for further investigation, which may initially include a chest X-ray.

Suggestions to help to improve lung function are: being a non smoker, performing regular exercise, and reducing excessive body weight.

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AUGUST 2014 53

CONTRACTOR COMMENT

Retentions – a change on the horizon JARED HOLT SENIOR ASSOCIATE, KENSINGTON SWAN CONSTRUCTION LAW TEAM

THIS ARTICLE REVIEWS the longstanding debate on the use of retentions in the construction industry and considers the chances of restrictions on the use of retentions being implemented by way of the Construction Contracts Amendment Bill.

Retentions are a percentage of payment otherwise due to a contractor (or subcontractor) that is withheld throughout the duration of a project.

They give a principal (or head contractor) security for remedying defective work.

Whether retentions apply is currently a matter for the parties to negotiate before entering into the contract.

However, many subcontractors argue that Parliament needs to intervene to account for an imbalance of power within the industry; a principal or head contractor that requires retentions will almost always get its way in a commercial negotiation.

The case for change The concern for subcontractors in particular lies in there being no restriction on how a head contractor holds or deals with retention moneys.

This opens the door for retention moneys to be used by a head contractor as working capital. This can, in turn, underpin the reasons for delays to retention release and/or defect claims being raised. There is a concern that it is often much harder than it should be to get retentions released, particularly when it can cost more than it is worth to pursue claims for release.

Further, in the event of head contractor insolvency, retention moneys are highly susceptible to being claimed by others in priority to subcontractors. The Personal Property Securities Act, and related securities registration and contractual arrangements, are commonly used by funders and suppliers to secure their interests ahead of subcontractors’, and other unsecured creditors’, claims.

While the amendments proposed in the Construction Contracts Amendment Bill did not initially cover retentions, 54 AUGUST 2014

supplementary order papers presented by Labour and the Green party, respectively, propose further amendments to the Bill. Essentially, the amendments focus on retention moneys being held separately in trust for their beneficiary. In the case of the Green party’s proposal, payees requested to provide retentions (whether subcontractor or head contractor) would also be entitled to choose to provide to a bond instead.

Factors against change From a principal’s perspective, retentions are a very good way of securing proper performance by a contractor. Nothing is quite so effective in terms of getting problems fixed as holding a contractor’s cash and being able to apply it to fix defects if the contractor fails to do so.

Alternatives such as bonds can achieve a similar result but not without additional layers of administration, technicality, and cost.

More administration will also be required if retentions are to be held in separate project bank accounts or otherwise in a manner that suitably reflects the intention for the retention moneys to be held on trust. This may be appropriate for larger projects, but an unnecessary burden in smaller projects.

There are potential legal issues to work through, one being reconciling the holding of retention moneys on trust under an amended Construction Contracts Act, with the treatment of trusts and security interests under our personal property and securities laws.

A further commercial consideration is the detrimental impact on head contractors’ businesses. Rightly or wrongly, it is likely that some head contractors do incorporate their ability to use retentions as working capital within their financing structure.

A head contractor may encounter difficult challenges and significant costs in sourcing alternative additional financing, which could have the unintended knock on effects of

In the event of head contractor insolvency, retention moneys are highly susceptible to being claimed by others in priority to subcontractors. further head contractor insolvencies or cost increases to end-clients. This is not really a reason for leaving things as they are, as head contractors should not technically be using retentions in this way. However, in reality, it is a reason for the legislature to ensure that there is sufficient advanced warning of how and when restrictions on retentions use would come into force.

The chances of change The sceptical view is that there will be a lot of talk about this, but no real change.

Subcontractor security for payment was discussed at length in the lead up to the Construction Contracts Act 2002, but the result was not to provide for security for payment. Other jurisdictions have also struggled to implement changes despite numerous reports strongly recommending restrictions on retentions use.

However, the industry has never been better positioned to make real changes than it is now. The devastating impact of recent high profile head contractor insolvencies has strengthened industry sentiment that something must be done.

That small to medium sized businesses are often the worst affected also makes the issue a potential political points scorer in an election year.

On balance, and despite the legal and practical issues that still need to be worked through, most would agree that the industry will be better off if subcontractors can be afforded greater protection in this area.

However, a consistent and concerted effort from the industry and politicians alike is still required to get real change across the line.

COMMENT CONTRACTOR

Persistence pays off JONATHAN BHANA-THOMSON CEO, NZ HEAVY HAULAGE ASSOCIATION

THOMAS EDISON ONCE said “the three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense”.

With advocacy for the heavy haulage sector, some of the issues that we confront seem almost bigger than the huge loads that get shifted around on the back of our transporters. However Edison’s comment is very relevant to a couple of issues that my members have asked the Association to confront on their behalf.

In my time with the Association I can recall one specific issue that took seven years to finally solve, and it took persistence at many levels to finally get an outcome. However, in my 15 years with the Association there has been one issue that the membership has consistently asked for some resolution about.

Overweight permit enforcement The situation that members were concerned about wasn’t when the transport of load was going well, but rather if something went wrong, and infringement fines were generated when an overweight load was loaded incorrectly and specific axles were overloaded. Fortunately this doesn’t happen often, but when it did the fines could be generated into the tens of thousands of dollars.

The Association felt that the fines should certainly be a deterrent, but should not be at a level that could

potentially put the financial viability of a transport company in doubt.

For many years the Association has been lobbying whoever would listen, that there needed to be a more commonsense approach to the penalty regime for vehicles travelling on overweight permits – at least these operators had obtained a permit and were complying with all other aspects of it.

At the end of last year an opportunity arose where the Association could seek an enforcement and penalty regime for all permitted loads, be they HPMV or on Overweight Permits, and we finally got NZTA and the Ministry to see sense and propose a common regime.

This was consulted on earlier this year, and with some tweaking recommended, the Association welcomed the thrust of the proposed changes. Hard work and the ability to stick to the vision to get change will result in a much fairer regime.

Road user charges When the new Road User Charges regime came into being around two years ago, there were some unexpected consequences for road user charges for overweight loads that were being transported on smaller transporters. The Additional RUC regime ended up being quite punitive and almost uneconomic for these transporters to be used on anything apart from shorter trips. There

were also other aspects of the RUC regime that were simply not real-world, such as the need for the additional RUCs to match the permit weight.

The Association has taken these concerns to the Ministry over the past two years, and we have agreed on a regime that is now much simpler in approach, easier to comply with, and with rates that are a better reflection of the wear on the road of such transporters when used in an overweight configuration.

This new regime came into being on July 1, and the difference between the outrage from two years ago, to the reaction from operators cannot have been more different. Both of these examples give credence to the maxim that persistence pays off, and the squeaky gate gets the oil. While we would have liked to have seen solutions to these issues before now, sometimes the window of opportunity, especially when it comes to legislation, takes some time to roll around. Identifying the opportunities to poke a spanner in the wheel at the right time in order to get some action can sometimes be good fortune, but at other times it’s simply about maintaining good relationships with the regulators so that when the door opens there is mutual agreement that something needs to be done – and now is the time.

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AUGUST 2014 55

CONTRACTOR CLASSIC MACHINES

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Hancock

elevating scraper pioneer Many of the machines used in earthmoving today were born out of the need for a specific tool to carry out a local task. Necessity is indeed the “mother of invention”. BY RICHARD CAMPBELL. Above: Pictured outside the factory in Lubbock, Texas is Hancock’s first self-propelled elevating scraper, the model 282.

The driveshaft to the elevator gearbox is clearly visible. Apart from not being manufactured in any great numbers, this machine is doubly rare in that it has a cab.

56 AUGUST 2014

JOHN EUGENE “GENE” HANCOCK was a farmer in Lubbock, Texas who was looking for a better way to level his land for cropping.

The land around Lubbock (and indeed a good deal of Texas) is undulating and, in its natural state, not entirely suitable for irrigation of crops.

So, armed with a need, Gene Hancock set about designing a terracer which would trim off the high spots and fill in the low ones.

His machine, drawn by a tractor and driven off the machine’s power take-off (PTO) by an extension shaft and reduction gearbox, was a great success and attracted the attention of other farmers who wanted him to build one for them.

In order to fill this newfound demand, Hancock set up the Hancock Manufacturing Company around 1949 and manufactured

terracers, seed drills and land leveling planes.

His first commercial elevating scraper introduced in 1953 was a five cubic yard machine called the “Aggie” and it wasn’t long before the wider potential of this type of scraper became evident to Hancock and so he began to design and manufacture larger elevating scrapers for coal stockpiling, and, more importantly, bulk earthmoving applications.

These early Hancock scrapers were all towed machines, with the elevator mechanism driven by an extension shaft from the towing tractor’s PTO. They required a fair deal of room to manoeuvre – not such a big deal on a farm but on a jobsite the wide turning area necessary was a limiting factor.

Left: The only twin-powered elevating scraper that Hancock built was the 16 cubic yard model 294. Hancock didn’t get to manufacture many with its nameplates on as the company was being bought by Clark’s Equipment Division at the time.

The majority of these machines were more commonly known as Clark-Michigan 110HTs.

Hancock had a rival, Johnson Manufacturing, which coincidentally, was also based out of Lubbock Texas.

It is generally accepted that Hancock came up with the original elevating scraper idea and concept, but Johnson was certainly not far behind him.

Johnson manufactured elevating scrapers that were fitted to John Deere and International Harvester agricultural tractors as a complete package with the first truly self-contained elevating scraper, the model 840, being introduced by John Deere in 1956.

These early elevating scrapers were all three-axle machines and also suffered from a lack of manoeuvrability.

Hancock set out to remedy this situation and began designing elevating scrapers that could be attached as a complete unit to single axle motor scraper tractor units and the concept proved highly successful.

Soon Hancock was supply elevating scraper bowls to Euclid, LeTourneauWestinghouse (Wabco), MRS, Allis-Chalmers and Michigan.

Not content with this success, Hancock designed and built its own elevating motor scraper, the model 282, which was introduced in 1963.

This featured a Hancock single axle tractor unit powered by either a 109 horsepower General Motors model 4-53 or an 87

Above left: Awaiting their next land levelling assignment, these two towed Hancock scrapers are a model 14E4 (on the left) and a 12E4 (on the right). Shaft drives for the tow tractor’s PTO are suspended above the towing yoke. This type of machine for land improvement is still very popular in the southwestern USA. Above: Hancock 9E4 towed elevating scraper on high flotation tyres.

This particular machine has been converted to hydraulic elevator drive, the drive shaft from the tow tractor powering a hydraulic pump.

Lots of life left in this old girl still!

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CONTRACTOR CLASSIC MACHINES

1. Beautiful factory shot of a production Hancock 282. Its relatively small size is apparent in this profile view, as is the exposed driveline to the elevator.

2. Hancock’s second self-propelled elevating scraper was the model 292. This was an 11 cubic yard machine and apart from the GM 4-71 under the hood, had an all-Clark powertrain. Resemblance to the contemporary Terex S-11E and Michigan 110-11 is not accidental as they are one and the same machine, albeit with a few panelwork changes.

Terex went one step further and replaced the Clark transmission with a Dana.

1

2

3. This is one of Hancock’s larger offerings, a model 18E4E towed elevating scraper, rated at 18 cubic yards. It is unusual in that it carries its own power unit to drive the elevator. This extra engine (a GM 2-71) does not power the rear wheels, only the elevator. If necessary, it could be pulled by tractors that did not have sufficient PTO capacity to run the big beast.

3

4

4. The last scraper that Hancock produced before being swallowed whole

by Clark Equipment Division was the nine cubic yard model 192. It was built to compete with Wabco’s 101F but very few 192s were manufactured before Clark took over. The sharp eyed amongst the readership will notice the Clark badge on the cab. This machine continued in production however and was marketed as the Clark-Michigan 110-9.

58 AUGUST 2014

horsepower Oliver-Waukesha model 310 diesel with a 12-speed constant mesh gearbox.

The bowl utilised for the model 282 was the same as that supplied to Wabco for its D Tournapull and held nine cubic yards and was powered by an extension shaft from the tractor’s transmission rather than by electric motors.

Quite a modern looking machine for the time, it sold relatively well, but mostly to agricultural contractors.

Spurred on by the success of the 282, Hancock then set about designing other, larger elevating scrapers aimed at the general contracting market.

In 1966 the model 292 was introduced, an 11 cubic yard machine and the first all-hydraulic Hancock design.

You can be forgiven for thinking that the model 292 looks very much like a Terex S-11E or a Michigan 110-11 because that’s exactly what it is – Terex & Michigan just changed the cosmetics a little and re-branded it!

Next off the production line was the model 294, a 16 cubic yard twin-powered machine with two GM 4-71s and Clark powershift transmissions providing the grunt.

This was also sold as the Michigan 110-HT but was actually built by Hancock.

Clark Equipment Company was very interested in Hancock by this stage (after all it had made them a lot of money), and so in August 1966, Hancock was sold to Clark-Michigan as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Hancock & Johnson – differences

For a time after the acquisition, Hancock products (including the newly introduced nine cubic yard model 192) were sold in parallel with Michigan but by 1972 all of Hancock’s products had been re-branded and were sold as Clark-Michigan.

Clark continued to sell elevating scrapers up until 1982 when a worldwide downturn in sales forced the closure of the Lubbock manufacturing facility and Michigan scrapers disappeared from sale.

Gene Hancock died in 2004 at the age of 98.

The New Zealand connection As far as the author is aware, there were no Hancockbranded elevating scrapers imported by the distributor of the day, Andrews & Beavan. However, Hancocks’ products did, and still continue to, move earth here in the form of Michigan 110-HTs, 110-10s, 110-15s, Terex S-11Es, Wabco 10E2s, 111As and 222Fs.

For the model collector

While both companies manufactured elevating scrapers and were located in the same US city (Lubbock, Texas), there was a fundamental difference between their elevating scraper designs and this was their method of ejection.

Hancock used a retracting floor with a fixed cutting edge and a bulldozer ejector.

A drop-down strike-off blade attached to the front of the bowl floor levelled the load being dumped.

With a Johnson scraper, the entire floor and cutting edge retracted as a unit and a bulldozer ejector pushed out what was left.

Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, principally related to finishing.

It is possible for some of the load to ‘hang up’ (particularly in sticky material) on the fixed cutting edge of a Hancock scraper.

With Johnson’s design it is difficult to spread chunky material, especially if the cutting edge is fitted with teeth, as the edge goes back to the rear taking the teeth with it and baulking the load being ejected.

As mentioned earlier, Clark bought Hancock out in 1966 and Johnson entered into a joint manufacturing partnership with Caterpillar in the same year. Johnson was eventually absorbed into the Cat organisation in the 1970s.

Very sadly there are no examples of any of Hancock’s products produced in model form in any scale. This is a bit of a travesty really considering the impact Hancock’s elevating scrapers have made on the earthmoving world.

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AUGUST 2014 59

CONTRACTOR MOTORING

BY PETER GILL

CUSTOMISED WESTERN

Kids around the neighbourhood keep wittering on about a truck called Optimus Prime. Sounds more like some form of Viagra than a truck. I’ve looked into it.

Apparently it’s the star of the latest transformer movie. It’s a customised Western Star. In several US cities, kids have been able to go into a ballot for a ride in it. I have travelled in, and driven, a lot of cool vehicles in my career. But I’d be happy to be a kid again to have a ride in, or a drive of, this. Even if I need to wet the bed or eat dirt to qualify.

THE AUSSIES CAN KEEP ZETA The last of the Australian car building industry will be gone by 2017. Great names like Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore will be no more. It has become too expensive to design and build cars for the Australasian market only.

A car maker now needs to sell two to three million of a model in the space of three to four years to justify developing it. Not all Australian cars were as iconic as the Falcondore. Bring on the Lightburn Zeta. Lightburn manufactured washing machines and cement mixers in Adelaide. This pedigree became obvious to anyone who bought the car the company created.

There was a sports car and a sedan. They were offered between 1963 and 1965. The sedan had no boot and the luggage area was accessed from inside the car. It had a 324cc engine. The sports car had no doors, probably to pay for its bigger 493cc engine.

Wives and girlfriends became incensed when having to climb in

or out over the side wall in dress, suspenders and stockings. This was 1963 remember. That’s the sports car in the picture. To make the car go backwards, you turned off the engine and restarted it by a system that made it turn over the other way. So you had four reverse gears. Fewer than 400 were sold before Lightburn gave up. When the annals of the Australian car building industry are published, I fully expect the authors to claim that the Zeta was a New Zealand car. In the same way as I expect Rolf Harris to suddenly become a Kiwi.

NO MORE FALCON AROUND The last of a long line of souped up Falcons produced by Ford’s so-called Performance Vehicle department (FPV) has rolled off the line. With Ford Australia set to cease building cars, this last ever FPV Falcon, called the GT-F, will quickly become a collector’s item.

It has the five litre “Boss” engine and puts out 351kW. Only 500 are being built with a mere 50 allocated to New Zealand. I have not yet driven it, but it’s sure to be a Falcon good car.

60 August 2014

Socking Italian electrics The Italian sports car brand Lamborghini sounds exotic and desirable. But historically, the brand has long fought quality problems in reliability, build and finish.

Of all the problems, electrical ones were often highest on owners’ lists of gripes.

I have long found that Italian cars are electrically eccentric. Test driving Alfas and Fiats, I could always see some kind of warning light, or even two or three, lit up on the dash, but with no apparent reason.

The Italians, it seems, are not good electricians.

The latest Lamborghini, the Hurucan, professes to have overcome all this.

Reason?

Volkswagen now owns the company.

The Germans do not put up with bad electrics. Yes, Hurucan. You read it correctly. Apparently it is named after a Spanish fighting bull, which is the first reason I would not buy one.

Ten cylinder, mid engine, and with a promise of good electrics and great reliability. Which reminds me. I walked into a magnificent Italian castle for a press conference being held by BMW. Of the 40 magnificent chandeliers, not one had more than about half the bulbs working.

SOMEWHERE OUT WEST I was in West Auckland recently and saw a pretty serious American-style low loader truck carrying a digger that disappeared before I could get my camera out. My interest was that the brand of the truck was Autocar. I had never heard of it. It looked big, serious and Kenworth-like.

To me, Autocar is a motoring magazine, one that I was a long-time columnist for. How can I not have heard of this truck brand? This American brand, as it turns out, started out nearly 100 years ago, but it was never a big player. The company was bought

by White and allowed to carry on and do its own

thing. White went bust and was bought by Volvo.

The last authentic Autocar was built in 1987. After that, Autocars were really Volvos. Volvo dumped the Autocar name in 2000. Just by the by, life moves on, and I while am no longer a columnist for Autocar magazine, one door closes and another opens. I am now the opera correspondent for Coffee News.

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August 2014 61

CONTRACTOR INNOVATIONS

Putting the brakes on failing Truck operators in Whangarei have no excuse for non-fulfilment of the increasingly strict NZTA requirements for brake compliance thanks to the local office of CablePrice.

The company has installed a permanent BM12200 brake tester, capable of testing any truck from a basic empty cab and chassis to a fully loaded truck and trailer. CablePrice Whangarei operations manager, Gordon Brown says that testing heavy vehicle brakes is now a quick and easy process that, in most instances, requires no booking and that can be done while the customer waits.

The systems performance tests are done under stationary and controlled conditions where measurements are made on each wheel allowing the technician to make an in-depth analysis that will pinpoint potential faults in the brake system which would otherwise go undetected, including brake imbalance and drum ovality. While it is Scania trucks the business is known for, the company’s technicians can test the brakes of all makes of models of vehicles.

Easy fit, big results The new Terex® Boom Booster kit increases the company’s CC 8800-1 crane’s lift capacity up to an impressive 90%. This means a CC 8800-1 can now out-lift any crane within the 1000 to 2000 tonne capacity range and even 3000 tonne capacity range cranes under certain conditions.

The Boom Booster kit offers up to 72 metres of lift-enhancing boom structure for the CC 8800-1

crawler crane with wedge-shaped, 11-metre long lower and upper adapters flaring out to 10 metres, nearly three times the standard 3.5-metre boom width. Five 10-metre long intermediate segments allow length needs of up to 50 metres to be met.

The Terex Boom Booster is available with new crane purchases or is easily retrofitted to existing models.

CONTRACTORS’ DIARY Date Event

Venue

Contact

6-9 Aug 14

NZCF / ACENZ / Roading NZ Conference

Energy Events Centre, Rotorua

www.nzcontractors.co.nz

13-16 Aug 14

Heavy Haulage Association Conference

Distinction Hotel, Rotorua

www.hha.org.nz

3-6 Sep 14

Steinexpo 2014

Homberg / Niederofleiden, Germany

www.steinexpo.eu

21-24 Oct 15

Conexpo Latin America

Santiago, Chile

conexpolatinamerica.net

25-28 Nov 14

bauma China

International Expo Centre, Shanghai, China

www.bauma-china.com

15-18 Dec 14

bC India

India Expo Centre, Greater Noida, Delhi

www.bcindia.com

Please send any contributions for Contractor Diary to kevin@contrafed.co.nz, or phone 09 636 5710

62 AUGUST 2014

New generation forklifts

Compacting made easier Crucial compaction data fed to the machine operator in real time is essential to ensure accurate and predictable results in the asphalt paving process and the designers behind the new Topcon C-63 indicate system reckon they can provide just that.

Designed to precisely track compaction with minimal equipment operation and using Topcon GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) technology the C-63 indicate system integrates seamlessly with Topcon’s Sitelink3D site management system to monitor compaction across every pass the machine makes, meaning operators can be assured of accuracy through every phase of the process.

The system’s simple colour-coded display screen helps keep track of cumulative compaction through pass counts and status reporting so all compactors in the same area can see work already performed by other machines preventing multiple machines travelling over already compacted surfaces, says distributor Synergy Positioning Systems. The Topcon C-63 can be bought to individual requirements and is also part of the Synergy Hire range of rental technology.

Jungheinrich’s redesigned IC (internal combustion) engine powered forklift trucks handle payloads of up to 3500 kilograms, have a maximum stacking height of 7.50 metres and are powered by Kubota engines that deliver high torque at low revs. The transmission shaft in the new torque converter features an integrated non-wear wet multi-disc brake, which, when compared with standard drum brakes, means almost no service costs, says Jungheinrich.

The manufacturer also promises that the new generation vehicle’s extremely low centre of gravity optimally positioned between the axles means high driving stability and outstandingly good safety characteristics.

The aluminium single unit radiator means the new truck with torque converter is well equipped to handle dust and other punishing ambient influences and operates well in harsh conditions. Servicing is promised to be fast, easy and economic requiring minimum technical skills. The L-shaped engine bonnet can be tilted almost 90 degrees and quick-release side panels make engine access easy. The driver’s seat can be adjusted, there is more leg room, and places to set down or store things such as cups and clipboards. Finally, the brake is a simple push button action.

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AUGUST 2014 63

CONTRACTOR INNOVATIONS

Smile – you’re on camera Finally an affordable reversing camera kit at a more than reasonable price that is an easy retro-fit on practically any truck or trailer in your fleet, including the caravan you may tow on site as an ad hoc office or tearoom.

The Gator system, distributed in New Zealand by Griffiths Equipment, costs from $299 for a nearly 18cm screen and camera and includes a five-metre cable, which will fit any vehicle up, of course, to five metres long. Additional seven- and 12-metre cables are available from around $20, says Tim Paterson, sales manager for Griffiths Equipment. For trucks and vehicles towing a trailer or caravan, Gator provides a Quick Disconnect Kit. This is a plug-andplay coiled lead that connects the viewing display on the dashboard to a separate camera stationed at the trailer, but can easily be disconnected when the trailer is parked up. It also has a trigger

cable that allows the driver to trigger the trailer’s camera as priority automatically when the trailer kit is connected to the trailer.

The Gator system can be bought as a complete ready-to-go unit, or tailored from a selection of components to customise a system to suit a particular vehicle and need.

Buy from automotive retail outlets and installers throughout New Zealand.

Reversible plate compactors Youngman Richardson recently released three new models in the Mikasa reversible plate compactors range for compacting granular soils and asphalt – the MVH308, the MVH408 and the MVH508, all of which come with a compass compaction meter if needed.

Ideally suited for civil engineering, construction and drainage contractors and the hire industry, they offer a high compaction capacity, travel speed and feature a full hydraulic reversing mechanism.

“Reversible plates provide the best value in compaction,” says Youngman Richardson sales manager, Phil Fairfield. “Our wide range of plates is ideal for high production compaction applications involving all types of products.”

The Mikasa Reversible Plate Compactors are driven by a Hatz Diesel engine, although there is a petrol option, and come with heaps of features that set them apart. These include cyclone air cleaners, an anti-vibration handle, a sturdy lifting frame and variable speed controls.

But it doesn’t stop there; all models also have an enclosed belt guard fold up handle, a large volume oil tank, removable extension plates and easy service access.

One of the exclusive features on all the Mikasa diesel models is the positive throttle engagement. This guarantees full throttle operation and maximum compaction by eliminating the mid-point RPM. A digital display provides accurate tracking of hours and maintenance intervals and a tachometer gives information on engine RPM while the machine is in operation.

For more information contact Youngman Richardson: 09 443 2436 or for South Island enquiries, 03 341 6923.

Public hoardings Royal Wolf shipping containers are appearing on footpaths and construction sites around the country as gantrys and being used in a variety of applications from public walk ways to temporary bus stops.

This one is pictured at the site of the new Fonterra headquarters on the corner of Fanshawe and Halsey Streets in Auckland.

The company also created a temporary tunnel made out of containers during the refurbishment of Manukau Institute of Technology in south Auckland.

Royal Wolf’s hoardings can also support heavy weights on platforms mounted to the roof making this the perfect place for storage, and temporary lunch and office rooms can also be stacked on top, with cantilevered or pole supported walkways providing access to these portable buildings.

A DV E RT I S E RS IN D E X Advancequip 39

Hydro Response

Allied Petroleum

13

Hynds Pipe Systems Ltd

Bauma China

45

Kerrick Industries

10

CablePrice OBC

Kiwi Asset Finance

5

Connexis 63

Komatsu 43

Total Oil

15

Contractor subscription form

49

Maccaferri NZ

Traffic Management NZ

20

DitchWitch NZ

29

Mimico IBC

Transdiesel 11

Forklift Solutions

36

N3 Business Buyer Group

33

Trench Shoring New Zealand

37

Gough Group

27

Prime Pumps

53

Trimble Navigation

21

Groundforce Industries Hirepool

64 AUGUST 2014

57, 59 OFC, 1, 16, 17

55 7

61

Sanzu Distributors Taylor Built

6

Topcon 9 Torrent Flood Protection

Rocktec 25

Wirtgen NZ

Ryco Hydraulics

Youngman Richardson

47

12

62

3 32

We’re a

big part of your business

Do you want to increase productivity and profits?

Kobelco listens to excavator users in the field, who say that fuel economy is the best way to increase profits. The Kobelco range includes excavators featuring advanced power plants that reduce fuel consumption, new hydraulic circuitry to minimise pressure loss, and highly efficient electronically controlled common-rail fuel injection engines.

Kobelco excavators provide greater performance and improved cost efficiency when compared to competitors’ machines.

Pro Mac Brushcutters are environmentally friendly Canadian-produced cutters can be excavator-mounted for mulching and forestry thinning jobs. Pro Mac manufactures two basic types of brush cutter heads - horizontal and rotary shaft - which are both designed to be easily fitted to most makes of excavators and backhoes.

Talk to the team at MIMICO. We are the New Zealand distributors for KOBELCO excavators, parts and service. We also distribute Pro Mac Brushcutters in New Zealand. www.mimico.co.nz Freephone 0800 806 464 | E-mail enquiries@mimico.co.nz | Auckland, Matamata, Christchurch Our brands

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