First South Island project under 'Design-Build’ plan

Press, 4 October 1977, Page 24

First South Island project under 'Design-Build’ plan

The Hornby Mai!, constructed by Industrial Holdings, Ltd, is the first major South Island building project to be completed under the “DesignBuild” plan. Industrial Holdings, Ltd, is one of the three joint owners of the Mall, along with G.U.S. Wholesalers and the Canterbury Savings Bank. According to Industrial Holdings, Ltd, Managing Director, Mr .R. H. N. Smith, the new Hornby Mall is the most advanced shopping centre in the South Island in terms of design, shopping facilities, landscaping and customer convenience. The mall was designed and built by the five-year-

old Christchurch company and its subsidiary, Moorcom Construction, Ltd. Mr Smith attributes the speed with which the mall was completed and the cost of the building to the efficiency of the firm’s “design-build” method — a technique used widely in other countries and one that is rapidly becoming dominant in the North Island. Using this method Industrial Holdings provided the team of archie tects and engineers who designed the mall and the team of construction workers who built, the mall. This means that the architectural design team, the structural engineers, ■ the quantity surveyors and the builders are all working together making for maximum efficiency. Organisation like this combines in one team all the skills necessary to put a building together from the initial sketch plans to the sealing of the car park, instead of having a number of people in different offices working on separate steps of the building.

“In our organisation everything happens under one roof. The designers are working in constant consultation with the men who are pricing the job and the men who are actually going to put the building up,” said Mr Smith. In the case of the Hornby Mall the contract was drawn up almost exactly two years ago, said Mr Smith. Working drawings were started in December of 1975 but the final land purchases were not made until November 1975 so exact details could not be finalised until that stage. Building started in August 1976, and yesterday, Stage One of the project was completed. The “design-build” method was developed in the U.S.A, and Britain and New Zealand developers are now catching on to the techniques, Mr Smith said.

Almost half the new buildings in Auckland are built by this method and it is becoming the biggest trend in commercial builds ing, particularly, because it is so much quicker and cheaper.

Industrial Holdings is the largest “design-build” company in the South Island and has already completed some notable Christchurch buildings — the new 1.8. M. building on the comer of Colombo Street and Gloucester Street and the Lyttelton Harbour Board container building. The Hornby Mall is their biggest shopping complex but the company

has also built the newest Ashburton Super Value supermarket and expects to complete another supermarket in Westport in about one month.