Sunday, October 17, 2010

#1235 ... Stadium of Dreams

Construction continues ... there has been more machinery per square metre at the Kilbirnie Stadium site than anywhere in Wellington since the Westpac Stadium was built 12 years ago.

Mainzeal and the Wellington City Council are building a new indoor facility that will seat 1000 spectators, house 12 courts for basketball, netball and all indoor racquet sports, and be an indoor training space for major events such as the Rugby World Cup.

“The design is an ideal height for the telehandlers,” says site manager Elliot Bartley. “They’re efficient and safe and a lot better to work with than the old cherry pickers.”

When you are working on such an exposed site, all those safety factors mount up. Near the Wellington airport, the site suffers from northerlies funnelled down the harbour, and southerlies directly off the Cook Strait and endless kilometres of ocean to the south.

It has been a bustle of activity, getting about 15,000m³ of earth and rock shifted, 11,500m³ of which was removed for the basement car park. That’s equivalent to about 940 earthmoving truck-fulls, almost all of which will remain on site. The site slopes to the west so the spoil from the underground car park has been reallocated to levelling the site. It’s a big site too – a huge 29,500m² with a building footprint of around 8500m².

1 comment:

Stefan Jansson said...

And if someone needs to build a new road that 15,000m³ of earth and rock can come in handy. I always find it interesting to follow building sites with the camera.