St Laurence House - Refurbishment

Client:          SL Properties (Auckland) Ltd

Project Brief

St Laurence House, formerly known as the Ports of Auckland building, is located at the southern end of Princes Wharf and has elevation on Quay Street.

This iconic building was originally constructed in the mid-1980's and then was subsequently modified to have the ground and lower floors added. Our project works on this building has the unusual distinction of having two Resource Consents as the building is positioned partly within the Coastal Marine Area (CMA) and partly on reclaimed land within the district of Auckland City.

The main area of work has included the demolition of the existing roof and the addition of a new structural floor slab and new roof under the existing retained plant room glazed screen. Glass reinforced concrete panels have been installed to the edge of the slab and will replicate the visual appearance of the lower floors. Refurbishment, modification and fit-out works to several other floors, both stairwells and the main services core also run concurrently. During all of this work the building has remained fully functional and occupied by tenants based on the ground and lower three floors. Our site team has worked closely with the client, his building manager and the neighbouring businesses to sequence works in such a way as to minimise disruption to all parties where possible.

On such a confined site, logistics and material distribution is key. The client requested that we use an external hoist for access to the top construction floors so that the existing lifts could be left for use by the tenants. At roof level we also installed a Potain MC85-B tower crane on a bespoke temporary structural steel support truss connected to two of the existing shear walls. This has now been removed .

The project works were completed in August 2009.