On the sunny west coast of the South Island in New Zealand, lies a small sleepy town called Greymouth. Many of you may have passed it on your way from the spectacular sights of water spraying the layered rocks in Punakakaiki down to the fast-receding ice on the Glaciers of Fox and Franz Joseph. Perhaps you stopped at the pub and savoured the taste of the local brew at the Montieth’s Brewery, sheltering indoors on the rare occasion that the rain did fall. Those who have actually been there know that the weather humour never quite grows old, as the tall belt of mountain ranges to the east ensure that any humidity from the rugged western coastal waters is caught and dropped all over this land.
I love the town; the people are genuine and kind and the bureaucracy straight forward by comparison to the urban centres. From early 2014 I was involved in this project, right from early concepts through to the end of Detailed Design (when the project went to tender with the contractor and to council for approval). At that point I was at the tail end of my pregnancy and had to handover to my wonderful technically minded colleague Peter for the construction phases. During my time on this project, I was involved in many stakeholder meetings in Greymouth, as our role at CCM was to design the envelope, sitewide elements and public interiors. Our colleagues from Jacobs focussed in on the health planning.
This hospital, small by many standards at 8500sqm, is somewhat unique in that it needs to cater for all manner of health issues to serve the entire lenght of the west coast. It tests a new model where GPs share the IL4 designed health centre which links into the main hospital building. Complexity on this project was not limited to attempting to fit many services into a small footprint, the site; earthquake prone, flood prone, tsunami prone, hard to access from other centres, subject to some of the highest rainfall and strongest sea spray in the country, located along an escarpment of a former Māori pathway and needed to manage the continuous running and then decanting of the existing hospital on the same site. We probably liaised with every land and construction type consultant one can think of and managed slowly to bring the building together into a form that could be accessed on all sides (there was no place for a discreet back entry). This project taught me, and anyone who worked with us a lot of things about construction.
I could talk for hours about this project but suggest as it is a public building, that you might just choose to stop by one day as you navigate the tourist trail, and see for yourself. In the meantime, there are some more images on the CCM website.