Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre

Te Pae Christchurch is a modern, purpose-built convention centre in the heart of the city. It is a world class venue with a highly flexible design to cater for a wide range of events, built overlooking the tranquil Ōtākaro Avon River. It is an important milestone for the city as the first major piece of construction completed in the CBD.

Te Pae includes a 1400 seat auditorium, 24 meeting rooms, 2800m² of exhibition space, has a total footprint of 28,000m² and will be staffed by 200 employees at peak times.

CPB Contractors is an Australasian construction company that is part of the CIMIC Group. CPB Contractors operations span Australia, Papua New Guinea, Asia, India and New Zealand, where they have had a permanent presence since 2003. CPB Contractors works across all key construction sectors including building and resources infrastructure, roads, rail, tunnelling and defence. In New Zealand, CPB Contractors are currently also building the new Metro Sports Facility in Christchurch and the Waikeria Prison in Hamilton, to name just a few of their ongoing projects in New Zealand.

Waste Management has been providing waste, recycling and hazardous waste solutions nationally to CPB Contractors since 2013. Our engagement has been as a trusted sustainability advisor to provide the best waste and recycling solutions to CPB Contractors including:

• Regular site visits to conduct waste audits and attend toolbox talks to discuss waste and recycling
• Identifying areas of improvement and providing the appropriate services and signage to increase recycling efforts
• Sharing our latest innovations for recycling construction materials and providing accurate reporting on all waste and recycling weights and volumes

Te Pae was built sustainably and has achieved Toitū Enviromark Gold certification, so the team created a bespoke and sustainable waste and recycling suite of services to win the account.

Challenges

CPB Contractors were faced with the challenge of building a large new facility in a busy central city location, with a small footprint for all services required on site. 

Action

One of the actions we took was for CPB to place their full cardboard, plastic wrap and polystyrene bins outside one of the access gates in the evenings. Our drivers would then empty these bins during the early hours of the morning, so that CPB could bring the empty bins back onto the site in the morning, ready for use again that day. Our team makes sure all the waste from events and exhibitions is recycled, reused or sustainably and safely disposed of. When events are fully underway, Te Pae will be serviced 7 days a week with a sophisticated combination of collections that include general waste, cardboard, plastic, glass, mixed recycling and food waste.

Result

During construction, waste streams were sorted onsite to ensure as much material as possible could be recovered. A solution to take pressure off limited space was to have CPB Contractors (the developers) place their bins outside an access gate. This kept up with the constant flow of packaging waste that was removed from the site daily. With bins being emptied in the early hours of the morning, this meant less disruption to workers during the day. Drivers then took this packaging waste to our sorting facility for processing and recycling.

This also meant that our trucks did not cause traffic delays for morning commuters as they travelled into the CBD for work.

With hard work and innovation – as well as a lot of COVID-19 resilience – our team secured a five-year contract for Te Pae’s waste and recycling services during 2020’s Level 4 lockdown. Waste Management has been working with CPB Contractors since 2013 and we are proud to have partnered with them again on this world class project.