SkyCity Grand Hotel column repairs

In late 2018, SkyCity’s abseiling and rigging team noticed that the concrete was flaking off the columns at the top of the Grand Hotel. Our Projects & Interiors team was tasked with finding out why the concrete was spalling, developing a repair strategy, and carrying out the work.

Ferroscanning determined that the reinforcing steel only had 30% of the cover needed in some areas. Water ingress from the rain over a 10-year period had stripped the protective alkali properties of the concrete and the steel had begun to rust, gradually expanding until it started damaging the concrete.

We developed methodologies in conjunction with Beca and SkyCity to remediate this. This included using both swinging stage scaffolds and a fixed man cage hanging off a 170T crane, 70 metres above Albert Street in the Auckland CBD. We put road closures in place and coordinated closely with the City Rail Link team, which was working below us.

All the planning paid off and we completed the project incident-free, reinstating the columns to a high-level finish befitting the 5-star luxury hotel.