Birch Hill Vineyard Development

We provided a design and build solution for clearing, contouring, drainage, roading and ripping of magnitude $2.5M. 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 planting of long and efficient vineyard rows. We were involved right back in the due diligence phase when Delegat were first looking at buying the farming properties and helped with the decision-making right from the start. This was on the back of years of proven past performance for this client. This whole project was direct negotiated and partnered; otherwise, the timeframes for every aspect would not have been achieved. The property/project site was remote and exposed to very cold and windy elements. We offered to build a contractors compound for our team, the client and the clients separate contractors and this included diesel bulk tanks, 2 offices, 2 smoko/lunch rooms and an ablution block, waste tank and fresh water tank. These were all designed and built by our teams and powered and serviced by our teams, generators, potable watercart and waste hydro trucks.

We also saved the client $1.5M by sourcing a gravel extraction permit and extracting from the river adjacent to site approx. 78,000m3 of river gravels which we used our state-of-the-art mobile crushing fleet of Kleeman Jaw, Cone and Power Screen plus a dry hired scalping screen all synchronised to produce all products needed for the project (roading, drainage, scalpings, building foundations). All materials were produced to engineers specifications and M4 highway spec for the State Highway entranceway works and internal roading works and these were tested through the Isaac IANZ certified civil laboratory.

The dam ($6.6M) is now the largest lined dam in the Marlborough region. It covers 12.7ha of land and has 13m high walls. The cut to fill took 4 months and for a lot of this time, we had 30 staff all in large machines to achieve 7000m3 solid cut to fill completed per day. We averaged 7100m3 solid placed per day to achieve the total 330,000m3 solid cut to fill within the specified timeframe and completed all the pipework in parallel with clever sequencing.