EasyGate, Tauranga - Kirk Roberts Consulting

Project details

// Client -
EasyGate

// Location -
Tauranga

// Size -
1,270 m² industrial plant / warehouse

// Services -

// Architecture

// Civil Engineering

// Construction Monitoring

// Fire Engineering

// Structural Engineering

// Project value -
$1.6M

// Status -
Completed

EasyGate is New Zealand’s leading aluminium gate company. Growing in size and needing room to expand their business a dedicated factory, warehouse and showroom in Tauranga was designed and built and Kirk Roberts were key to the project.

Kirk Roberts architecture and engineering services deliver

Our team delivered this 1,270 m² industrial plant / warehouse with integrated office and showroom development on the adjoining EasyGate site in 2020. We utilised a multidiscipline approach incorporating both design and engineering services to deliver this $1.6 million project.

Our architectural department designed the overall site plan, to complete the building design concept right through to finished resolved architectural design.

The building features a 335 sqm two-level northern facing office and showroom with a 935sqm powder coating plant and racked (rear) warehouse and spacious 250sqm (side) canopy. The building design primarily utilises precast panels and primary steel structures throughout with a contemporary mono-pitch roof that prevents high-risk internal gutters being required.

The original design utilised both lightweight and heavy exterior weight façade types, however during the design phase we undertook value engineering and cost reviews with the main contractor and proposed a more cost efficient, all heavy weight façade solution that reduced the overall construction programme.

The benefits of a multidiscipline approach

We delivered this project utilising our structural, fire and civil engineering departments across both Christchurch and Tauranga office locations while our architectural department was also responsible for the overall design coordination and statutory management that also included administration and management of all additional consultants and subconsultants necessary for a successful building consent application.

The benefit of having one key point of contact for most of the design and construction process, and having all Kirk Roberts services available and collaborating across offices, made this an efficient project for EasyGate.

Client Testimonial – Ray Sperling, Managing Director, EasyGate

“Having worked with Kirk Roberts previously on my other project that I was project managing as well as trying to run a small business, when it came to doing this development I said to the guys, what if you could just cover all my engineering requirements and I won’t have to worry about dealing with all different people as I’d done previously, you could do it all in house? I wouldn’t go back to doing it all myself, Kirk Roberts can do the lot!

When I got the initial bill, I was like whoa that’s a lot of money for a building, considering the experience I’d had building my other one back in 2011. However once I got my head around the fact that when you see the difference in the two builds, one is a shed and one is a real building- there is a difference visually straight away. This one has concrete walls, it will last forever. This time we were building something more substantial. It would be valued more in the long term and a much better building, and then the money side of things didn’t really come into it.

Kirk Roberts is just really good to work with. They helped me understand what I was in for and what I had to do. It was a partnership where they kept me informed. They keep it personal and would pick up the phone and call me, unlike other companies I was dealing with who only email if there were issues.

Our partnership continued with the inclusion of a state-of-the-art powder coating plant incorporated into the original KR plans submitted to council. This was a huge bonus to me as it enabled consents to be streamlined. Kirk Roberts followed up with most of the engineering compliance work required from pallet racking in the warehouse to structural signoff on crane towers over the powder coating plant treatment tanks.”