Constructor's Interchange And Dam Win Top Awards

Constructor's Interchange And Dam Win Top Awards

Nationwide civil and roading contractor Fulton Hogan has won two of the three categories in the New Zealand Contractors' Federation's prestigious annual Caltex construction awards.

The company won the major-projects category for its construction of the $17 million Newlands interchange in Wellington, and the medium-sized-projects class for its building of the Horseshoe Bend dam on the Teviot River in Central Otago.

Harker Underground Construction won the small-contractor category for its work on the Queen St-Swanson Lane stormwater diversion in downtown Auckland.

The judges singled out Fulton Hogan's Newlands interchange for special praise, saying all six the entries it beat would have won in any of the 21 previous years of the competition.

They described the project, situated in the Ngauranga Gorge, as a multi-disciplined contract demanding a wide range of skills and completed amid the difficulty of having to work around traffic amounting to 60,000 vehicles a day.

The judges were highly critical of what they described as the misuse and extreme interpretation by bureaucrats of the provisions of the Resource Management Act.

This is costing the construction industry millions of dollars in lost production, unwarranted costs and loss of go ahead on some jobs that this industry desperately needs, the judges said.

ENDS....

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