Contractors have brought Main Street watermain renewal project to a close, following several months of work alongside the southern footpath. The initial project involved replacing a 96-year-old water supply main from Pine Avenue to Wakefield Street, which came in undertime and underbudget.

The efficiency gains were made through Council’s collaborative project management approach. We set up a project headquarters in an empty store on Main Street, providing a base for contractors to work from and for Council officers to provide support both to the contractor and affected retailers. The shop-front also provided a drop-in space to that members of the public could visit and obtain more information about the project and its progress.

Main Street retailers remained open during the project, but the works did create a visual barrier to some stores. Council communications were distributed and published to make sure everyone knew that retailers were open and accessible.

“We really valued the opportunity to be ‘on the ground’ for the duration of this work,” says project manager John Price. “It enabled us to respond quickly to issues, and strengthen relationships with our contractors, retailers, and the City Centre visitors. Our ability to work this way provided great efficiencies throughout the project which our contractors, Sierra Delta were able to capitalise on, and provide increased value for money for our ratepayers.”

The gains in efficiency meant that there was leftover time and budget once the initial work was complete. We sought to leverage the opportunity we had with the open works by moving to also replace sections of three rider mains into Princes, Geange, and Russell Streets. This means we won’t need to do subsequent end-of-life replacement after upcoming paving work is complete. The rider main work has since been completed which, while also fixing a leak near a fire hydrant, ultimately provided an increase in resilience to the area going forward.

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