Beca is one of the largest advisory, design and engineering consultancies in the Asia Pacific and in 2018-2019, they generously provided pro bono geotechnical and structural engineering services when we built Te Rite o Taranaki, the viewing platform at CUE Haven. Since then, Beca has continued to support CUE Haven in many ways.

Today, one of Beca’s geotechnical engineers, Sangita, who had been part of the team involved in the soil analysis at the view platform site, brought along some of her colleagues from the Geotechnical Laboratory and Instrumentation Monitoring department to help with some walking track maintenance. 

The group arrived first thing in the morning and included Ben, Jaison, Kajal, Pritpal, Sangita & Sanjay.  Also joining us for the day was our friend and young volunteer, Lauren.

Most of the team was new to CUE Haven so we spent some time getting acquainted over morning tea and then Mahrukh gave a talk about the history and philosophy of the CUE Haven restoration project and our future plans.

Thomas then gave a safety briefing and a description of the work planned for the day.

The Beca team wanted to have a look at the viewing platform their colleagues had worked on so Thomas spent some time showing them the site and talking about the project.

We then walked down to the work site.  The plan for the day was to work on fixing a drainage problem on a long section of track that runs downhill.  Heavy rains over the past year had overwhelmed the drains and caused a series of washouts on the track.

In addition to fixing the track, we also wanted to upgrade the drain system to prevent future issues in the event of heavy rains, so the first task was to study the terrain and determine what improvements needed to be made.

The work involved walking the track sections to see where water was flowing and then determining the best way to divert it.

The existing drains were cleared and enlarged where necessary.

They spent some time digging out and clearing a drain pipe and enlarging the sump to help the pipe function more effectively.

In addition to fixing the drains, the team also worked on repairing damage to the track.

They also put a new layer of gravel on the track sections they repaired.

The team also tackled some minor repairs to the side walls of some steps and track sections.

By lunchtime the team had made major improvements in the drain system and transformed the track—well done!

It was really nice working with the Beca team and it was great to see the teamwork as they worked to come up with practical and effective solutions to improve the track.

Thank you all very much. You all have made a great contribution and your hard work and efforts are most appreciated.

A big thank you to Lauren for her friendship and her ongoing help at CUE Haven.

And a special thank you to Sangita for organising the very productive and successful visit today and her continued support of our efforts at CUE Haven.

We hope you all enjoyed the day as much as we did and we hope you will come back with your families and friends to visit CUE Haven —your community nature reserve.

We truly value our relationship with Beca and we look forward to having you all back for another productive volunteer day. And we look forward to Beca’s continued involvement and support for CUE Haven.

Thank You!! Thank You!!