Barfoot & Thompson, as owner-occupier, redeveloping their own premises in Epsom, Auckland. As the people who would occupy the finished building, they needed it to work for their staff, their parking and their day-to-day operation, not just to be built.
The problem
The existing building was an old multilevel commercial structure with seismic problems and asbestos, and it sat on a genuinely difficult site. It was flanked by another commercial building under separate ownership, had a residential property on the other boundary, and a shared driveway ran through to a further commercial tenancy at the rear that needed to stay open throughout. The site also fronted a main arterial road.
In plain terms, the job was redeveloping an old commercial building with asbestos and seismic issues on a tight urban site, and getting consent and building a new commercial premises hemmed in by neighbours, a residential boundary and a live shared driveway. Any one of those constraints could have stalled the project. Together they needed one party to hold the whole thing and keep every neighbour, tenant and authority on side.
The approach
CDM ran the project end to end as the single accountable party, from consent through design to construction. This is the commercial construction project management model we use on every job: one point of accountability from the first drawing to handover.
CDM secured both building and resource consent and undertook all of the design, including the daylighting work required to protect the neighbouring residential site. Much of the early effort went into occupancy. CDM worked through the numbers up front to fit every stakeholder requirement for car parking, for people and for fire design, so the building complied and still gave Barfoot & Thompson room to move. The structure was designed so future fit-out and spatial planning work would not be hindered by the bones of the building once it was up.
The project management held everything together on a live, boxed-in site. CDM kept the rear tenant’s access open by creating alternative driveways through the construction site and staging the works so nothing was ever fully cut off. The surrounding buildings were kept tight and protected while the new building went up. Craning the concrete slabs meant closing a main Auckland arterial road, which CDM did over weekends, carefully organised with Auckland Transport under traffic management plans and health and safety controls, so weekday traffic and the businesses around the site kept running.
The result
The on-site works ran for approximately 24 months and delivered a brand-new commercial building, including the full fit-out, with all of the consenting handled as part of the one package. The rear tenant kept access the whole way through, the neighbouring buildings and the residential boundary were protected, and the road closures were managed without disrupting the weekday arterial or the surrounding businesses. Barfoot & Thompson dealt with a single accountable party from concept to consent to a completed, occupancy-ready building designed around how they actually use it.
Planning a commercial redevelopment in Auckland? See our commercial design and build services or get in touch with CDM.