A first for HG
Piritahi is HG’s first alliance. Our Head of Strategic Initiatives, Glen Cornelius, is a Piritahi Board member and says that being involved in such a transformational project reflects HG’s core value of helping to create better communities for everyone.
“Since our inception 138 years ago, HG’s been involved in building the nation,” says Glen. “We’re honoured to continue that tradition and be part of this important urban development regeneration.”
Glen says that working together to help create better communities is embedded in HG’s DNA. “After 138 years, it’s what sets us apart.”
What we do
Piritahi has planned, designed, coordinated, consented, and is building infrastructure across the Kāinga Ora large-scale urban developments.
Piritahi streamlines land development, laying the groundwork for dramatically improved neighbourhoods that capture a range of positive social and environmental outcomes.
This includes preparing land for development and delivering new and upgraded infrastructure and amenities.
Responsibilities include:
Geotechnical investigation
Surveying
Civil design and infrastructure planning
Removal of old state housing
Land remediation
Arranging consents for earthworks and infrastructure
Civil construction (including roads, parks, and utilities)
Construction Phase Support (CPS)
Stakeholder engagement
HG undertakes survey, engineering design, consenting, planning, and construction observation for Piritahi.
"Since our inception 138 years ago, HG’s been involved in building the nation, and we're honoured to be part of this important urban development regeneration."
Glen CorneliusChief Executive
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Projects
There are over 30 projects currently being delivered with dozens of projects in the pipeline within the Piritahi programme of work.
For example, Piritahi is remediating residential land on sites across Auckland including Mt Roskill, Mangere, Oranga, Tamaki and Northcote. Rather than following the standard industry approach - engaging testing companies, waiting on results, and then engaging contractors to strip or encapsulate soil within individual sites, Piritahi is optimising this end-to-end process by leveraging the value of its programme, upskilling in-house and purchasing state of the art equipment to speed up the operation. The result is an estimated cost saving of $5 million over the life of the programme in this discipline alone.
Piritahi is also leveraging global consents and has strong working relationships with council-controlled organisations, helping them to deliver upon their infrastructure commitments to Auckland within the Kāinga Ora development neighbourhoods, faster. For example, Piritahi constructed Roskill South’s Freeland Reserve stormwater flood attenuation upgrade for Healthy Waters and is delivering Lake Road’s water main upgrade for Watercare in Northcote, among other infrastructure and public amenity projects.
Supreme Award Win
We’re proud to be part of the winning team at Piritahi, scooping up two awards, including the ultimate prize at the IPWEA NZ Public Works Excellence Awards.
The Piritahi House Removal Programme won the Kōmata O Te Rangi, Supreme Asset Management Excellence Award, as well as the Excellence in Environment and Sustainability Award for our work removing state housing from large scale project areas and collaboratively applying industry-leading waste minimisation practices. This critical work is enabling significantly increased intensification and sustainable housing outcomes for Kāinga Ora: Homes and Communities.
Congratulations to everyone in our award-winning team including Piritahi, Tonkin + Taylor, Dempsey Wood, Hick Bros Group, Kāinga Ora, and Woods.
Note: The national asset management excellence awards recognise New Zealand’s best public works and infrastructure projects. They celebrate “the often-invisible efforts and achievements of the public works sector including local government, central government, consultants, contractors and suppliers around Aotearoa.”