Waimea Community Dam, Lee Valley

Customer: Fulton Hogan Civil/ Taylors Contracting JV

Location: Lee Valley

Pump: 2016 Sermac 5Z37 & 5Z38 37m & 38m 5 Stage Z Fold 

The Waimea Community Dam is a Concrete Faced Rockfill Dam (CFRD) built for the primary purpose of providing irrigation and community water supply for the greater Nelson are. The dam is located approx. 15km from Brightwater, Nelson.

The main contractor Fulton Hogan Civil/ Taylors Contracting JV alongside Damwatch Engineering were tasked with the construction of the Dam which is the first largescale dam built in NZ since the Clyde Dam was completed in 1993. Concrete Pump Services 2002 Ltd (CPS) held the sole concrete pumping contract where we ran, coordinated and undertook all the Concrete Pumping over the 4-year period.  Just over 30,000m3 of high spec concrete was used over the building of the dam which began in early 2019 through to April 2024 using our Sermac 5z37&38m Boom Pumps to do the work.

The Dam itself is a 13Mm3 (13 billion litre) reservoir with the Dam face 53m high and has a 220m crest length. 490,000m3 of rock was used to build the Rockfill embankment with a concrete face on the upstream side of dam which was done using a slipform machine, along with a Spill way and flip bucket designed to disperse excess water.

CPS made over 200 Visits to site pumping where Allied Concrete produced Low slump Fly ash low carbon concrete on site with their mobile plant. The pours varied in size and duration with the biggest pour at 475m3 and longest pour on the slipform face which took over 50Hrs continuous pours to complete.

The project involved dealing with:

• Difficult access and terrain, with Site access through steep forestry tracks.
• Floods in the river when working on culvert.
• Loss of workforce to COVID-19 restrictions.
• Cost pressures.
• No Cell phone Reception meaning everything had to be communicated via Radios.
• Onsite Concrete Testing.
• Ongoing engineering methodology changes, due to poor quality of rock found onsite.
• Difficult Concrete.
• Bush Fires meant site had to be shut down over two different periods.

No serious harm injuries and full compliance with resource consent requirements for the duration of the project. Only 1 pump breakdown over the 200plus visits to site, which a backup pump was onsite with minimal disruption and or time loss.