Located 90 minutes north of Auckland, Te Arai Links is a new luxury golf destination offering world-class green, fine dining and accommodation in Mangawhai. Our team were engaged to provide multidisciplinary engineering services across 8 types of single storey buildings that included the Golf Hub, Pizza Barn, Visitors’ Accommodation, Caddy Shack, Club House, Bunker Bar, Ocean Suites and a Wellness Centre.

The challenges

The timeframe on this project was very tight. This project required complex engineering to ensure the architects design was maintained, with this being more challenging for the pizza barn and golf hub, due to the large size of the structures, as well as these primary structures being made of timber.

With the entire expansive and remote development being surrounded by a natural reserve and for the future flexibility and unit titling, the project was exciting and challenging from a fire engineering perspective.

The Kirk Roberts solution

Our structural engineers worked efficiently to provide viable and cost-effective engineering solutions whilst preserving high quality of work and structure within the project’s tight timeframes.

As Te Arai Links encompasses a variety of buildings, we offered fire design services based on the specific needs of each building in order to meet and exceed the expectations set by the local councils. With unique solutions and having significant technical capability, Kirk Roberts fire team also added excellent value engineering by facilitating departures from prescriptive codes allowing architectural freedom and cost savings in design. With early involvement of the fire team in this project, we have added value with removing the fire alarm system and all fire rating requirements from the clubhouse with a suggestion in terms of building location and the proposed title boundaries re-definition. Our advice could also make the minimum possible fire rating for Visitor Accommodation units.

Responding to the remote site challenges, in terms of fire service access routes and evacuation planning the fire engineering team conducted thorough assessments of hose run distances, road widths, and designated safe points for each building within our scope to ensure full compliance in these critical areas.

The result 

Te Arai Links Visitor Accommodation won Gold at the 2023 New Zealand Commercial Projects Awards