Project overview
Scope $10.5M
Date of completion 2022
This dam is the largest lined dam in the Marlborough region, covering 12.7ha of land and has 13m high walls. Our involvement in this project dates back to the client’s due diligence stage during the property purchase and continued on in a design and build space once settlement occurred. There was no construction plan for this project; we provided a design and build solution for clearing, contouring, drainage, roading, and ripping. The block had a 2km long and 12m high steep terrace that we had to completely alter to create a long 15 to 1 grade slope to enable the planting of long and efficient vineyard rows.
During the ECI phase, we managed to save our client $1.5M by sourcing a gravel extraction permit and extracting from the river adjacent to the site. Approximately 78,000m³ of river gravels were extracted using our state-of-the-art mobile crushing fleet, synchronised to produce all products needed for the project including roading, drainage, scalpings, and building foundations. All materials were produced to engineers’ specifications, as well as M4 highway specification for a State Highway entranceway to the vineyard. These were all tested and verified through our Isaac Construction IANZ certified laboratory.
The project site was remote and exposed to very cold and windy elements. Due to this, we offered to build a contractors’ compound for our team, our client, and the client’s other contractors. This included two offices, two lunch rooms, diesel bulk tanks, an ablution block, waste tank, and fresh water tank. These were all designed and built by Simcox and powered and serviced by our teams, generators, potable water carts, and waste hydro trucks.
At the peak of construction, we had 30 staff across our heavy plant to achieve 7,000m³ solid cut to fill completed per day, with the overall cut to fill taking four months to complete. We averaged 7,100m³ solid placed per day to achieve the total 330,000m³ solid cut to fill within our specified timeframe and alongside this, completed all the pipework in parallel with clever sequencing to ensure timelines were met.
