Tuakana Hostel Project Update 1

The historic 1930’s Tuakana Hostel located on Hospital Hill in Napier was closed in 1998 and has been vacant since. Due to its age and deterioration, the building required demolishing as it was no longer safe to occupy.

This tender was strongly focussed on sustainability, with a large emphasis on repurposing or recycling demolition waste. Our teams’ extensive previous experience and innovative sustainability practices was exactly what the client was after and ensured success of our submission.

Being located on top of a hill with restricted access and surrounding residential properties, our team carefully thought out a range of techniques to control noise, dust and vibration to minimise disruption to the surrounding residents as required throughout the duration of the project.

Prior to establishment onsite the hostel was targeted by thieves who were breaking in to steal scrap metal. In doing so they further spread the asbestos contamination throughout the hostel which significantly increased the scale of the environmental clean. We installed security cameras, fixed ply over all windows and doors and removed access ladders to the building to deter thieves.

We established ample resource onsite in August 2024 to commence the significant volume of asbestos removal works. Asbestos is present throughout the building including pipe lagging, ACM & AIB sheets, vinyl, bituminous roofing, gaskets, debris and contaminated soil.

The team is looking forward to getting stuck into this project.