After the existing 1960’s 11kV Submarine cable crossing the Northern Wairoa River faulted, Northpower quickly needed a new solution to ensure reliability of supply for the Dargaville and Ruawai areas.

Our project team installed ducts across the bridge – so we were able to remove cable across swampland, meaning better reliability and lower maintenance costs.

We’re really proud of the innovative approach to problem solving from all our Northpower team members as well as NZTA and sub-contractors during this complex job.

These innovations included:

• Consultation with Steve Bowling Contracting, supplier Unistrut and NZTA engineers to design a suitable bracketing system that met seismic, thermal & vibration requirements detailed by NZTA.
• Sourcing a suitable ducting system to meet required impact ratings and one that allowed for movement on the bridge.
• Managing the workflow to ensure everyone was on the same page with timings and health & safety requirements.
• Pulling a long run of cable over the bridge – approx. 550m. Our Northland contracting team were assisted by our Warkworth Contracting team who had done a similar job in Auckland previously.

This project ended up being completed ahead of time without any incidents, and we had zero customer complaints throughout the project. Another job well done!