Working in the great outdoors in the civil construction industry is anything but boring and straightforward – there’s always the chance of an unexpected challenge popping up to keep you on your toes.
Read on to check out tales where amazing things are all part of the job, including an attack on equipment by a gang of kea, a team of climbers channelling Mission: Impossible by exploding a 2,000-tonne rock at the top of a mountain to keep one of New Zealand’s most scenic roads open, and pulling out ‘ghostbuster’ technology to save a colony of rare fish.
Attack of the cheeky kea
It all started one April a couple of years back when Marais Laying’s Site Supervisor Ramnik Singh’s team reached The Divide on the Milford Sound to Te Anau highway, halfway through laying a 120km run of fibre optic cable to connect more West Coast communities.
At the end of the first day’s work they parked all their equipment in a layby overnight as normal, but next morning had their “first encounter” with a mysterious mischievous force, he says.
“We came and discovered something had chewed our digger’s seats, any exposed plastic and the wires on the lights of our traffic trucks, which weren’t working anymore.
“We took pictures and reported the damage. The locals said it must be kea, we never expected that. It was quite surprising for the whole crew how naughty they can be.”
He says the team tried to protect their equipment by covering it with road signs, but the kea were determined to get through and gnaw on any plastic or rubber they could get their beaks on.
With some of the functions on the excavator not working due to the control panel being chewed up, Ramnik says he got mechanics to replace the rubber buttons with hard plastic ones, which the kea couldn’t chew, but they couldn’t do anything to stop them attacking the seats.
“We thought our main challenge would be the terrain and the weather because we were in a national park, but we never expected that kea were going to be part of the challenges we had to deal with.
“We had a very funny incident, where our stop-go guys were sitting down having their lunch and, when they tried to take a photo of the kea, the birds would take a bite out of their lunch. One of my colleagues had a kea fly off with his work boot too – they’re very clever birds.”
The kea ‘attacks’ continued as the team worked their way from The Divide all the way to Milford Sound. Respecting the fact they were deep in kea territory and realising there was not a lot they could do, the team just kept on fixing their equipment and got used to having less foam on their seats than usual, Ramnik says.
“They kept chewing and we kept fixing – we just had to get used to operating without foam on our seats.”
Watch: Marais Laying – Haast to Hawea
Mission: Possible – Exploding a bus-sized boulder on top of a mountain
For Geovert Project Manager Chris Black, working with explosives on steep cliffs in mountainous terrain is par for the course. But one of the days he says never be able to forget is blowing up a 2,000-tonne boulder the “size of a bus” 900m above Homer Tunnel in Milford Sound.
“It’s the best project I’ve ever been on, nothing has really come close to it with the height, the scale and the weather.”
After a rockfall had closed the tunnel in 2013, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) identified there was still loose material that had to be removed before the tunnel could be reopened safely.
Some might say that the task fell into the realms of Mission: Impossible territory, however Chris says Geovert was up for the task. While his team often deals with rockfalls and slope stabilisation, only being able to access the site by helicopter and being at such extreme altitude made the operation above Homer Tunnel unique.
Over the course of months, Chris and his team painstakingly prepared for the explosion by securing safe access to the massive rock, installing anchors so a half-tonne drill could be flown in by helicopter to drill holes in the boulder and then filling them with explosives.
Chris says on blast day everything was “planned to the minute”, with the only delay caused by him setting up a video camera to capture the epic explosion.
“There were no nerves on the day, everything was set up and ready, we blew up the explosives in the morning and it all went to plan – job done.”
The explosion went exactly as it was designed to: minimising the size of the rocks in the fallout to protect the tunnel below, which was soon reopened by NZTA allowing the only road link to the Milford Sound and the people who live there to be restored. Mission accomplished.
Watch: Geovert removing a 2000-tonne boulder 900m above Homer Tunnel
Rare fish population saved to swim another day on the East Coast
During an initial site visit for a bridge repair project at the Mangamate Stream over SH50 in March this year, Fulton Hogan Environmental Advisor Melissa Tran-Trung knew something was up when she came across a school of thousands of tiny fish.
“It was quite surprising. There were so many of them, at that stage it was hard to tell what species they were.”
Melissa came back to the Central Hawke’s Bay stream for a second assessment with an ecologist to formally identify the species before the project started, knowing that a stream diversion would be required for the work to be carried out and the importance of ensuring the fish were protected.
The ecologist identified the fish as the rare dwarf Galaxias Divergen – a freshwater fish usually found only in the lower North Island and Upper South Island and growing up to 9cm in length.
“This was quite exciting – they’re normally only found in fragmented populations and finding so many in one place is quite significant. It was a really cool find.”
To get the fish out of harm’s way, a method called ‘electric fishing’ was used. First waratahs and mesh netting were used to fence the fish in. Then the ecologist put a tool that looks like a “ghostbusters machine with an electric rod” into the water to stun the fish with a small electric current. Once stunned the fish floated up the surface where they were scooped up and placed into buckets and relocated downstream when they were back to 100%.
Melissa says she is proud that they all had the opportunity to remove the fish to a safe environment, away from their worksite.
“We saved over 2,000 of them.”
From coming to the rescue of rare fish in danger, to helping keep New Zealand’s environment and civil infrastructure in the best shape possible, it’s all part of the job for Melissa, she says.
“As an environmental advisor I feel it’s important to have a practical relationship with the environment. I can make a difference every day through the decisions I make.”
Could civil infrastructure construction be the career for you?
If you’re the sort of person who wants to enjoy a career where there’s the possibility of adventure lurking round the corner and epic projects to tackle, why not explore more about the range of opportunities out there.
