November 4, 2015

A pour to end all pours

The Canterbury District Health Board and Fletcher Construction will begin the concrete pour to end all pours, starting in the very early hours of this Saturday morning (November 7).

This is the last and the largest in a series of nine pours, which began four months ago (July 25, this year), to build the foundation slab for the new Acute Services Building (ASB) at Christchurch Hospital.

David Meates, Canterbury DHB chief executive, says the final pour will be the largest continuous concrete pour using a single concrete supplier in the South Island.

Starting at 1am on Saturday, 7 November, subcontractors Firth Concrete will take about 12 hours to pour around 2,300m3 of concrete through four pumps – some 360 truckloads in total.

“With a building footprint of 10,450m2 and a foundation slab that’s swallowed over 15,000m3 of concrete, the new Acute Services building will be the South Island’s largest hospital building,” Mr Meates say.

“Once complete, the 10-storey building will have additional operating theatres, around 400 inpatient beds, purpose-designed spaces for children, extended radiology department, an expanded intensive care unit, an emergency department, and a rooftop helipad.

“The building is being built to IL4 (Importance Level 4) standards, or 180 percent of the building code – the highest level for a building designated to be an essential facility and be up and running after a disaster.”

The foundations will be base-isolated to give protection from seismic events.

“Some 2,300 tonnes of reinforcing steel has been used in the slab and in the columns on which the base isolators will sit,” Mr Meates says.

Mr Meates and Board deputy chair, Steve Wakefield will be present at the Fletcher Construction crew BBQ on Saturday morning at 6.30am to help serve breakfast to the well-deserving foundation workers.

ENDS

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