Check out what's been happening at Monkeytoe in November & December in our latest monthly news feature.
A note from Budd
Hi everyone,
Welcome to the end of another grand year! By now, I hope you’ve got your summer planned out and some well-deserved rest in the calendar, as well as some time with the important people in your life.
2022 has been a busy one for us here at Monkeytoe, made possible by the good sorts in all departments and our supportive clients and industry peers. Thank you for making this another excellent year, and we look forward to an exciting 2023.
For our last issue for the year, we look back at some highlights from the last 12 months, cover a couple of recent projects, introduce one of our Project Support specialists, and then put up our feet.
Stay safe out there, enjoy your break, and we’ll see you early in 2023 for more great innovations.
Cheers,
Budd
Getting to know Taylor White, Project Support
If you’ve been on our LinkedIn lately, then you’ll have seen our video of a day in the life of Taylor White, one of our Project Support people.
Originally from Australia, Taylor has extensive experience in hospitality and retail, and in her previous role would often be the person flown into the launch of a new store to help them open up in the best possible way. Ready for a change of pace, she moved to Aotearoa New Zealand with her partner and kids just before Covid struck – but soon found her footing and her new home here with us at Monkeytoe.
Taylor’s role is all about ensuring projects run as they should, often by checking in with project managers, keeping good communication lines open, and assisting by putting the right tools in the right places. While she’s worked on countless projects, one that stands out recently has been getting to go behind-the-scenes at the massive job we’ve done with the Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre.
With a love of the great outdoors, Taylor makes time to ground herself in nature, often taking the kids out to explore, camp and fish around Taranaki, or taking the kids to their sports games. There’s still a lot of the country for Taylor to explore, so if you have any good recommendations then make sure you let her know when you next see her on site.
Twelve months of Monkeytoe
January
We started the new year strong with a massive project for the massive Maraetai Dam that can provide 360MW to the Waikato. It’s provided them with a safer scaffolding solution that makes penstock management that much easier – and will last them a lifetime in wet conditions.
February
This month was all about giving back to a few worthwhile groups we love to support: Little Fighters, St John, and Open Home Foundation/Te Whare Kaupapa Āwhina of New Zealand. And with a few late summer cyclones battering the country, we were able to quickly develop and deploy innovative bridge solutions to keep our communities’ infrastructure strong.
March
Fonterra Takanini gave us the chance to flex our design-to-installation muscles with a comprehensive, flexible pipe support solution that’ll stand the test of time. We also went bush with a set of stairs, helicoptering them deep into the Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tane Conservation Park deep in the heartlands of Rotorua’s Te Ureweras.
April
The Transmission Gully Motorway project – aka Te Ara Nui o Te Rangihaeata – is 27 fresh kilometres of four-lane motorway, connecting Porirua to Paekākāriki and forming the newest stretch of State Highway 1. We provided stairs and ladders – some reaching around 15 metres – that would enable workers to get safely up challenging dirt banks and exposed areas.
May
Oji Packaging came to us hoping to replace the steel structure supporting a kind of recycling silo on their site where cardboard scraps and off-cuts would be shredded and reduced for re-use. But hot works were out of the question; the silo had to continue to operate during repairs, processing a high volume of dry, fine cardboard and paper particles. Our modular aluminium solution was perfect and, after four days, Oji Packaging had a new structure with Monkeytoe walkways and handrails. May also saw us launch the hotly-anticipated condenser mounts, massively increasing the loading capacities of our off-the-shelf mounts.
June
How do you safely hold six tonnes of HVAC equipment, located above the office block of NZ Post’s parcel handling and distribution centre in Wiri? Rather than go for the 23,000 kg steel solution, NZ Post chose our XBEAM products, and got a 6,000kg, 22m x 9.5m portal-mounted platform with 65 sqm of louvre screens. June also saw us join ArchiPro, fit out a saw-tooth roof at 656 Great South Road, and help two local schools raise $23,000+ for Jumping June.
July
12 years after the Christchurch earthquake destroyed their school, Marian College’s students finally got a new permanent home – with XBEAM platforms playing their part. We also celebrated our high-tensile, marine-grade aluminium solutions at New Zealand’s flagship Costco store, and helped support stroke survivors with Beanie Up.
August
Developed over 22 months, Ormiston Town Centre is your place to shop, eat and play – and we had our hand in developing access and mounting solutions to keep everyone comfortable and safe. August also saw us work in the affluent Remuera, Auckland, to provide discreet, powder-coated acoustic screening of a development’s HVAC equipment.
September
Spring often brings showers – so just as well the largest dam built in Aotearoa New Zealand in over two decades, the Waimea Community Dam in Lee Valley, South Island, was ready to handle some extra rain. We also started our ‘Day in the Life’ videos.
October
Just recently we spoke to Development Manager Logan Klenner about what innovation means to us, we showcased our part in the massive Palmerston North Hospital project, and gave back to Te Paepae o Aotea.
November
We recently completed works at Project Kelly, two massive film studios in Auckland that we delivered with Haydn & Rollett. The Aotearoa New Zealand film industry produces some world-class content, so we knew our part had to deliver in a way that would live up to international standards.
Huge air conditioning platforms, stairs, and 800m of latticework trusses all put special demands on a film space. Not only do these units have to be functional, but critically they also have to be isolated and prevented from transmitting vibration and noise into the studio spaces.
Our part started in mid 2021, with the installation just wrapping up. We worked with the structural and design engineers on the job to develop a hanging ply-decked XBEAM walkway that ran from portal to portal, as well as some huge aircon platforms outside, ladders, and central-column stairs with acoustic breaks built in. The walkway handrails were engineered to allow the studios to hang lighting and speakers off it safely – something that they were able to do, having saved a lot of weight by switching from steel to aluminium.
It was a complex, six-week install that required us to feed up modular segments of each solution and assemble in situ. But the result was ideal: more floor space for the studio to use, and enough vibration elimination to keep things quiet on set.
December
Last year, we were approached by the Department of Conservation (DoC) to replace the tired single-span timber bridge on the Christchurch to Little River Rail Trail cycleway. This was a great chance to work as a collaborative team with DoC.
This sort of project is well within our wheelhouse – and who wouldn’t want to spend some time in a picture-perfect countryside? We collaborated with DoC for over a year on this project to make sure an aluminium-based bridge solution would be engineered with plenty of tolerance for the earthquake-prone Canterbury region.
Once we’d surpassed stringent new design and engineering requirements, and aligned the 17.5m single-span bridge with DoC’s engineers and peer reviewers, we manufactured the bridge at our Taranaki base and shipped it down to Christchurch.
DoC organised a helicopter to collect the bridge. After a 16 min flight down the road, we bolted it all together and that was it – all done in three quarters of a day, with zero issues on site.
Christmas break
We hope you’ll be making some time to have a well-deserved break this summer. Mark it in your calendars: the Monkeytoe offices will be closed from the 23rd December, and we’ll be back at it on the 9th January.
See you next year!