Invercargill Central CBD Redevelopment

Invercargill Central | Invercargill, Southland

A lack of investment in old, uneconomic buildings that were no longer fit for purpose and, in some cases unoccupied for decades, is a challenge facing many New Zealand regions. In Invercargill, the answer to this challenge has been the formation of a joint venture company, Invercargill Central, made up of private and public entities which purchased a 2ha inner city block containing approximately 50 commercial buildings, of which 37 were listed heritage buildings and eight were buildings of national significance.

Bonisch was engaged to carry out project management, planning, and surveying services for the Invercargill Central redevelopment project. This large-scale $200M+ high profile project will have a large impact on local businesses and the community.

Bonisch was instrumental in the project formalisation phase, bringing industry best practice project management to the project. This included facilitating a risk workshop with the wider project team and directors and then development of a project execution plan and programme. This set the project up for success in ensuring all parties understood what risks the project faced, and how these could be mitigated.

Bonisch played a leading role in bringing in NZ Heritage Properties from the inception of the project to assess the heritage buildings and provide robust advice on their inclusion in the redevelopment. From this we engaged with Heritage NZ and worked with them as a key stakeholder to understand their needs and perspective.

To enable the accurate design and potential incorporation of existing building facades into the design, Bonisch undertook a full 3D scan of the entire HWCP site. 3D scanning takes millions of survey accurate measurements around a 360° view as well as a taking a 360° photograph, by combining the two we get a colorised 3D point cloud which can be imported into design software for the project architects.

Bonisch implemented an engagement strategy which incorporated early and frequent consultation with the local authority to get buy-in from their decision makers, and to develop a no surprises approach.

Bonisch led the consenting phase of this project through to successful completion with consent granted fro the development, demolition complete, and construction well under way.