50 Customhouse Quay Refurbishment and fit outs $40m

Project Manager: Will Broadmore

Site Manager: Bert Warda

Services Design & Co-ordination: Nick Samson

Chief QS: David Sykes

Work at 50 Customhouse Quay commenced in 2006, and consisted of a complete strip out and new fit out for each floor of this iconic 7 storey Wellington central city building.  This structural steel framed and concrete encased building was built in the 1920’s, and has had completely new services systems installed followed by new fit outs.  We established a large team onsite, which included our own design team working with new computer modelling design packages to ensure the services were integrated without affecting the special heritage nature of the building.

The building remained occupied on various levels for the entire duration of the works.  This required critical server rooms and central plant to remain operational throughout. At the time of refurbishment the building was known as the Tower Building it is now known as Chartered Accountants House.

The project featured some unusual fit out elements:

• Silent stand-alone HVAC system to a 150 person conference facility (separate mechanical contract)
• Full commercial catering kitchen
• Exterior balcony upgrade including raised pedestal pavers and glass balustrading
• 490m2 of large granite flagstones installed to a 1mm:3m levelness tolerance
• Two large extensions to the building’s structure to open up additional office space
• Detailed fire engineering to allow seamless open access between the two floors through the building’s heritage listed central staircase