To support Kāinga Ora deliver new homes in eastern Porirua, construction and infrastructure experts Higgins, Goodmans, Beca, Harrison Grierson and Orogen have partnered alongside Kāinga Ora, Porirua City Council and Ngāti Toa Rangitira to create the Te Aranga Alliance.

Over the next 7 years Te Aranga will be responsible for upgrading and delivering key pieces of infrastructure and preparing land for new homes. This will include a range of civils work from site investigations, housing demolition, site remediation, land development, and civil infrastructure upgrades to stormwater networks, roads and public spaces.

The advantage of an alliance-style collaboration is it encourages organisations to work together to develop innovations, manage and mitigate risks and resolve issues fast when they arise. This type of partnership is something that is relatively new for Kāinga Ora, but is already proving to be a real game changer for large scale developments.

“Te Aranga have already shown their value recently helping to cooperate and resolve an issue so work could continue in the area” says Will Pennington, Porirua Development Project Director. “Typically if a project had an issue, this would cause significant time delays because each organisation would be working independently. However, the Te Aranga came to the table and supported our team find an alternative solution so work could continue as scheduled”.

Te Aranga is over halfway through the demolition of 70 old state homes that are past their best to make way for new warm, dry and healthier homes in sizes that better met the needs of the community now and in the future.

It is still early stages of developing the programme, but the initial estimates indicate around 250 jobs could be created to carry out this work over the next few years. “We are looking to hire local where we can.” says Te Aranga board chair Brian Kirtlan. To date Te Aranga have they have employed a local firm to provide scaffolding and have local machinery operators and labourers working onsite.

Brian Kirtlan added “it’s important that we provide opportunities to not only upskill anyone interested in being involved in civils work, so locals not only have the skills to work on the Porirua Development, but also future civil projects.”

For more information about Te Aranga Alliance click here.