New Whanganui campus wins top building award

New Whanganui campus wins top building award

The new Whanganui tertiary education campus Matapihi ki te Ao has won Gold in the Wanganui Registered Master Builders awards at a ceremony in Wanganui on Saturday night.

Registered Master Builders McMillan Lockwood and Naylor Love combined forces to undertake the project. Winning a Gold Award in the commercial educational category recognises and celebrates this outstanding commercial project.

The award recognises excellence in three key elements; design, contract management, and construction. The Project Team receiving the award includes the Registered Master Builder commercial contractor, architects Dickson Lonergan and Designgroup Elliott, engineer, subcontractors and the client, UCOL. Many local subcontractors worked on the campus, and Project Manager Paul Booth says the quality of their work was superb.

Whanganui UCOL Principal Suzanne Frecklington says the award is well deserved and reflects the excellence of the team that worked on the new campus, especially the leadership of McMillan Lockwood’s Project Manager Paul Booth.

She says it was a complex facility to construct, bringing together renovated heritage buildings, and modern but compatible new buildings, constructed with environmentally friendly and sustainable materials.

Suzanne says the campus’s ‘green’ credentials also posed building challenges: “The new buildings use state of the art VRV air conditioning which has a very low energy use and low space requirements, they also utilise considerable mass concrete to retain energy in both summer and winter. The buildings are made of materials such as concrete and glass which are long lasting and low maintenance products,” she says.

“This wonderful new world-class facility has already proved its value for staff and students, as an advanced educational environment. We are delighted it has now been recognised with an award from the Registered Master Builders.” Suzanne says.

ENDS

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