Wellington Airport Fire Station

Built to replace an aging facility, Wellington Airport’s new fire station features two vehicle bays and a two-storey operations area with office space, meeting rooms, a large kitchen, storage and washing facilities, bedrooms and a gymnasium for the fire fighters staffing the station round the clock. Outside there is a viewing area for plane-spotters, car parking and a covered vehicle wash.

Engaged on an ECI basis, our team identified several design changes to de-risk the foundations and carpentry scope, with our Project Engineer working closely with the consultant engineers to investigate and implement the improvements.

The fire station sits on 432 driven timber piles. We found new homes for 40 tonnes of pile offcuts in the community, including an animal sanctuary, getting the project off to a sustainable start. A worm farm for food scraps, soft plastics recycling and rainwater harvesting helped to achieve a waste diversion result that the client has set as a benchmark for their future projects.

The super-strong IL4 building comprises structural steel framing, including massive steel portal frames in the vehicle bays, clad with brick veneer and imported European fibre cement panels. The IL4 specification added to the carpentry scope in the extensive timber-lined areas, including wall framing with larger hold down bolts at closer centres, dwangs at closer centres and double studs. This was all lined in 17mm ply with nails at 50mm centres, with any penetrations reinforced with strap bracing.

With the building height kept low to fit into the residential neighbourhood, our in-house BIM team helped us to resolve the challenge of fitting a complex array of specialist services in the tight ceiling space. As well as clash detection and model federation, our BIM team produced an award-winning 3D layered model of the embodied carbon in the project.

Photos by Jason Mann Photography