Fuelling NZ's Future:
Refining NZ’s Te Mahi Hou

United Civil was a key project partner in the delivery of a new processing facility at Refining NZ’s Marsden Point Oil Refinery.

Using continuous catalytic reactor technology, this $365m investment increases the refinery’s process capacity by three million barrels annually, while significantly reducing CO2 emissions, operating and maintenance costs.

After a rigorous selection process, United Civil was appointed the civil works contract for the project in early 2013.

The diverse works were undertaken in the high risk environment of an operating oil refinery and often within live process areas on a very busy site – so stringent safety controls were in place at all times.

The successfully delivery of Te Mahi Hou was contingent on the development of an integrated and highly collaborative team. Our Senior Civil Works Manager was seconded into the Project’s Construction Management Group. He worked closely with managers from the instrumentation and electrical, heavy lift, mechanical and rotating equipment disciplines.

Our team of around 100 skilled tradespeople and engineers completed over 2,300 separately scheduled civil works activities to a very high standard, without any Lost Time Injury and ahead of schedule.

Key features included:

• as part of an early contractor engagement approach – key members of our management team were relocated to the project’s design office in the United States, to assist in the review and optimisation of the detailed design, together with further development of the detailed construction schedule
• all earthworks required bringing the site to grade and construct foundations, including dewatering and conditioning of excavated spoil
• significant temporary works including shoring, scaffolding, construction of laydown yards and other temporary pavements
• constructing over 10,000m³ of heavily reinforced concrete foundations, plinths, supports and frames, including the placement of over 3,000 hold down bolts – all with a positional accuracy of +/- 3mm
• constructing what is believed to be one of the largest off-site batched continuous concrete pours ever undertaken in New Zealand, being a heavily reinforced foundation up to 2m thick, some 2,750m³ in volume and completed over a period of 16 hours
• constructing 16m high, heavily reinforced frame structure using self-compacting concrete, which in turn supported processing units rising nearly 90m above grade
• all site drainage including the Accidentally Oil Contaminated and Continuously Oil Contaminated systems
• exsitu and insitu fireproofing (with reinforced concrete) of structural steel members
• constructing fire mains, access roads and site paving
• providing survey and site set-out for the entire Te Mahi Hou project, including verticality checks and settlement monitoring.

In late 2015 the Te Mahi Hou project was commissioned – producing on-specification fuel ahead of schedule and within budget.