Wellington Water manages the drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services within the Wellington regions. Outside of Auckland, they represent the largest body of expertise in water infrastructure services management in New Zealand. The complexities and limitations of Wellington’s water system requires an extensive toolbelt to avoid significant community disruptions on what is often a narrow yet well-balanced network. As such, Wellington Water is constantly searching for innovative approaches to solving problems.

GHD is one of the world’s leading professional services companies operating in the global market sectors of water, energy and resources, environment, property and buildings, and transportation. GHD’s Craig Brown and Callum Allison incorporated Mooven into the delivery of Wellington Water projects in order to monitor and develop strategies to minimise impact on the traffic network.

The following gives a short account of the Dixon Street Pump Station and Box Hill/Burma Road water-main renewal projects Wellington Water, GHD and Mooven collaborated on.

To get an in-depth account, including how the collaboration led to better stakeholder relationships and productivity gains of up to 10 extra metres of pipe being laid per day, click on the link below.

Wellington Water Case Study

Dixon Street Pump Station

The Dixon Street Pump Station is the first to be constructed in Central Wellington in over 40 years. The new station allows Wellington Water to provide wastewater services to a growing population. It also relieves pressure on other pump stations around the city, reducing the chance of overflow incidents affecting the harbour.

The central location presented a significant challenge due to space restrains, demanding an innovative approach that still delivered on project requirements.

Understanding a busy CBD location

Mooven’s platform gave GHD a bird’s-eye view of the network of routes and roads around the worksite, allowing them to monitor activity and get a real time perspective of flow-on effects of the project to traffic.

Pre-construction monitoring informed construction plans set by Wellington Water, GHD and Brian Perry (the lead contractor) and determined any risks of various closure and layout options.

“The biggest thing for me is the reassurance. I felt more confident in our position by being able to see that there weren’t really any traffic peaks to worry about. If anything did happen, then we had somewhere to start from and show evidence that we were front footing the issue and using real-time data to try and plan things in advance” – Callum Allison, GHD

Responding to concerns about traffic

At one point, construction was paused due to traffic impact concerns around the worksite. However, Wellington Water and GHD found Mooven quickly demonstrated actual impact on journey times was slight by comparing against pre-construction data. This clear evidence base alleviated apprehensions and work was allowed to recommence.

Exceptional results

Mooven’s software gave Wellington Water and GHD a complete understanding of traffic conditions around the immediate works site and the surrounding area, facilitating conversations with project stakeholders and providing proactive notifications of any potential incidents. This exceptional collaboration led the project to win the IPWEA New Zealand Excellence Award 2019, for the best public works project (under $5M).

Box Hill and Burma Road

The second project as part of this collaboration involved a water main upgrade in a high profile area of Wellington that also serves as the back-up route to the main highway. A large part of the project entailed laying over 1100 metres of water piping through Box Hill.

Adapting the approach to alleviate community concerns

Pre-works to repair pot-holes in the area led to a flurry of complaints from residents. The proposed work location was a main thoroughfare and the primary access to three different schools.

As construction began, traffic monitoring extended to side and backstreets to check for potential impacts. This proved invaluable, highlighting that while traffic on Burma and Box Roads was flowing ok, the traffic management setup was causing longer delays on some side roads. With clear visibility of the location and extent of the impacts, Wellington Water pivoted their traffic management strategy. Continuous monitoring of the area confirmed the success of their revised strategy.

Unlocking productivity gains

As conditions stabilised, it became clear that the working window could be extended without adverse impact on motorists in the area. This small gain in available hours had a disproportionate impact on delivery, allowing Wellington Water to lay up to an extra 10 metres of pipe per day.  This productivity gain for the project was also a victory for the community in the form of minimised disruption.

“Working in what is sometimes an extremely constrained environment, means it’s inevitable we’ll impact the surrounding network. Having full visibility in what that impact is, and being able to create strategies around this has proven to be invaluable to us and the community.” – Mike Syred, Project Engineer, GHD.

For more information about these projects, visit Mooven’s website at the link below to read the full case study.

Wellington Water Case Study