Education

Whangarei Heads School Multipurpose Room and relocation of historic building

Site constraints meant the moving of the historic old church (the art room) to provide the space required for a new multipurpose building at the end of the courts. A difficult project at the rear of the campus, completed with a very happy client.

Tauraroa Area School, Tauraroa

Griffiths has been property managers for Tauraroa Area School for over 10 years and completed  36 projects including moving a school house off site, many renovations, a new purpose built science and technology block, extension and upgrade of the administration block, re-siting of classroom, infrastructure projects, demolition and rebuild projects.

Over this time Griffiths has completed 2 x 10 Year Property Plans.

The journey for the photos depict the full transition of the campus from tired to newer modern learning spaces.

The junior classroom block upgrade.

Three old dark and uninviting classrooms that were connected via toilets and bag bay areas were reconfigured with toilets and bag bays turned into transparent breakout spaces with visual access through the three classrooms.

The hard materials room upgrade.

Modernisation of this tired room was achieved with refurbishment of the room in general and installation of a new extraction unit with ducting hidden in the lowered ceiling which also incorporated new sound absorption materials, insulation and more efficient lighting and heating.

Blomfield Special School and Resource Centre

A purpose built facility to meet the particular needs of this school, which included the moving of an old villa and demolition of another to provide for parking and access to the new facility.

This project required specialist input from the Ministry of Educations special needs advisors and careful attention to detail to accommodate the particular needs of students.

Ngunguru School

Ngunguru School’s site has over 70% coverage of steep bush reserve and the campus is nestled into the base of the hill with the estuary to the front, therefore any development here is always going to be a challenge.

Griffiths has a 10 year history of working at the school, having completed over 9 projects, including a new multi-purpose building with the welcoming Maihi and 2 new classrooms. Other projects include the upgrade of 7 classrooms, relocation of the dental clinic, water storage and sheds and erection of a canopy. Griffiths have completed two 10 Year Property Plans for the school.

More recently a  business case  was put to the Ministry of Education on the basis of a new 2 storey entry building that allowed maximum footprint of the flat area of the site to be used without encroaching on the field and court and includes a new classroom, with a new staff room above it. A truly magnificent scene is set out over the estuary, sea and  the sandspit from this building.

The two more recent projects include a new modern, futuristic toilet block to replace the pre 70’s, very dated and dilapidated block. It is hard to remember the old block now as the new block is loved by the whole school. An extension to the original block has provided for breakout space for students.

Hora Hora School

The journey for roll growth started at Hora Hora School with approval to increase the asset base for a roll growth programme in June 2014.

The site whilst reasonably large is land locked by a central court that is geotechnically challenged, so outside thinking and lots of neighbourly help allowed an external off site access road over 350m long being formed to the south. Griffiths negotiated access and resolved challenging traffic management issues to allow this to happen.

Since then, Griffiths have placed 7 temporary relocatable classroom buildings around the site, demolished 4 buildings and built a brand new multi-storey precast concrete building comprising 10 teaching spaces.

Construction of the new building started in December  2015 and was completed November 2016.