HWR Tower

Situated in the heart of Invercargill’s CBD, HWR tower is the city’s tallest building. It boasts a diverse range of spaces over eight levels, with retail tenancies on the ground floor, office spaces from levels two to eight, and a rooftop penthouse.

We proposed alternative methodologies and materials in our tender to improve the buildability and safety of the project, then worked collaboratively with the consultants to implement them in a process that also yielded significant programme and cost benefits. This included using Comflor composite steel deck system for the floors and Doka jumpform formwork to build the in-situ lift shafts, which reduced work at height and sped up the build.

Our suggestion to wrap the building in a unitized curtain wall façade and warm roof panel system reduced the weight of the structure, requiring less structural steel. The glass fibre reinforced concrete and Neolith sintered stone panel façade offered all the programme benefits of off-site prefabrication and meant a significantly reduced the external scaffold scope. It is also durable, low maintenance, and blends in beautifully with the streetscape.

Due to the lack of space around the busy corner site, we devised a solution to erect a 67-metre tower crane at the centre and build around it. We implemented comprehensive traffic management plans and meticulously coordinated deliveries and crane operations, always taking the weather conditions and flight schedules into consideration.

HWR Tower was a community focused project, with our crane and crane operators becoming local celebrities after we ran a popular “name the crane” colouring competition. We visited local schools and hosted site tours for architecture students from the Southern Institute of Technology. Aware of the impact of Covid on our dedicated team of local subcontractors, we prioritised wellbeing with MATES in Construction sessions and a series of celebrations to commemorate project milestones.