Managing the complexities and limitations of the water system in New Zealand capital city requires an extensive tool belt to avoid significant disruptions to the community on what is often a narrow yet well-balanced network. As such, Wellington Water is constantly searching for innovative approaches to solving problems.

GHD’s Craig Brown and Callum Alison incorporated Mooven into the delivery of Wellington Water projects to provide the ability to monitor its impact on the network during projects and develop strategies to minimise that impact.

The Mooven platform enables its customers to use data to assist in planning optimum project timelines, project delivery, managing traffic disruption, minimising environmental impact, as well as improving engagement between all project parties involved.

Two recent projects are building the Dixon Street pump station and the Box Hill and Burma Road water-main renewal.

Dixon Street pump station and rising main

The Dixon Street Pump Station is the first to be constructed in Central Wellington in over 40 years. This allows Wellington Water to provide wastewater services to a growing population, and relieves pressure on other pump stations around the city, reducing the chance of overflows into the harbour.

Given the lack of space, the central location presented a significant challenge, requiring an innovative approach that would work within the space constraints, while still delivering all the services required.

Understanding a busy CBD location

Mooven’s platform allowed GHD to monitor a full network of routes and roads – giving a birds eye view of activity around the worksite as well as the flow on effects to the surrounding network, in real-time.

The Dixon Street Pump Station is the first to be constructed in Central Wellington in over 40 years.

Pre-construction monitoring was implemented to help Wellington Water, GHD and Brian Perry (the lead contractor) inform their construction plans and determine the risk of various closure and layout options.

Implementing Mooven gave GHD the assurance that if any issue occurred, they’d be quickly alerted when a KPI was breached, and have the capacity to rapidly respond.

Responding to concerns about traffic

As the project continued Wellington Water and GHD were asked to pause construction due to concerns raised over traffic impacts around the worksite.

However, due to GHD’s preparation, Mooven was able to quickly demonstrate the actual impact on journey times so work could start again. Comparing journey times pre- and during-construction provided a clear evidence base for responding to perceived issues.

Proving there was only a slight increase in delay, the work started back up. From there, both Wellington City Council and the delivery team (WWL, GHD and Brain Perry) had access to the same body of information – meaning full visibility and transparency during the works.

Being such a high profile job, this also gave the team an arsenal of information to respond to the media if any concerns were to arise.

Achieved results

The use of Mooven’s software enabled Wellington Water and GHD to have a complete understanding of both traffic conditions around the immediate works site and the surrounding area. Having this information on hand facilitated conversations with project stakeholders, freeing up more time to deliver the works.

Proactive notifications were also enabled for the contract to provide situational awareness of any potential incidents.

By the end of the project, through the exceptional work by GHD, and Wellington Water, with assistance from Mooven – The project went on to win the IPWEA New Zealand Excellence Award 2019, for the best public works project (under $5M) due to the innovative construction methodology deployed to address the tight physical space.

Box Hill and Burma RoadProject two was a water main upgrade in a high profile area of Wellington, that serves as the backup route for the main state highway. The project involved laying over 1100 metres of water piping through Box Hill.

Initial Community Concerns and how wellington water and GHD adapted their approach

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

The project involved laying over 1100 metres of water piping through Box Hill in Wellington.As construction began traffic monitoring was extended onto a range of side and backstreet that could potentially be impacted. This proved invaluable as it highlighted that while traffic on Burma and Box Roads was flowing ok, the traffic management setup was causing greater than anticipated delays on some side roads.With clear visibility of the location and extent of the impacts, Wellington Water pivoted their strategy.

Working in harmony with your surroundings

A revised traffic management strategy was implemented to address delays on side roads. As the area was being continuously monitored, it was possible to watch the results come in and confirm that their revised strategy was work.

Unlocking productivity gains

As conditions stabilised, it became clear that the working window could be extended without an adverse impact on motorists in the area. A small gain in available hours has a disproportionate impact on delivery due to the sunk cost of setting up the worksite and opening trenches each day.This strategy allowed Wellington Water to lay up to an extra 10 metres of pipe per day, not only providing productivity gains but also a victory for the community as works could move more quickly down the road resulting in less disruption.In both occasions, it was the extensive visibility of the network, an evidence-based approach to monitoring, and the ability to test strategies and rapidly respond that helped Wellington Water execute so successfully.

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