When Shane and Renae Smart established Hamilton-based civil works and underground construction company Civtec back in 2014 they started literally as one man and a van, subcontracting to a larger company who had the contract on the original high speed fibre roll-out in the city.
Today, the company has grown substantially to employ 120 staff and operates independently supplying directional drilling and civil works, along with utilities and telecom network construction.
General Manager operations, Pele Tanuvasa, has been involved in the company since July 2018 in a pioneering role, set to guide the company through its next growth evolution.
“There was recognition from Shane and Renae that to best seize future opportunities in the rapidly evolving telecommunications and infrastructure sectors, the company needed someone to be responsible for managing overall operations, as well as securing future opportunities to expand our services further.,” says Pele.
“Coming to Civtec was about the feel I got around the company.,” he says. “We are about more than just numbers and that feel certainly permeates throughout the company.”
While head-quarters is in Horotiu, just north of Hamilton, the company also has a base in Tauranga and while the bulk of its work is in the greater Waikato, recent projects has seen Civtec teams work on civil and utilities projects in places such as Palmerston North and Taupo.
A large amount of work currently underway involves the designing and laying out of Ultrafast Fibre communal underground fibre networks in smaller settlements around Hamilton.
Areas such as Tirau, Tamahere, Matangi, Tauwhare, Rotokauri and Templeview are all receiving fibre for the first time.
“We employ six designers in our team whose job includes designing how the underground fibre installation will lay-out.
“Once they have the design work done for a specific area, and the cabling has been laid outside households then our 30-plus dedicated technicians have the task of hooking homes up to the network,” says Pele.
Work began on the roll-out 18 May last year and is due to be completed at the end of this year. So far 93,000 metres of drilling has been completed, 178,000 metres of duct installed.
To achieve this, 40 d edicated members of the drill and technical crews have been assigned to the project, with a further 50 staff working on connecting houses.
Civtec is also working to support three water (treated water, wastewater, stormwater) infrastructure installations in the Central North Island, and has recently completed several large water reticulation projects.
Put simply, Pele says the continued growth is a reflection of the consistent high quality of work and service Civtec demonstrates.
“It’s led us toward other work. We now have a lot of experience in telecommunications and other underground civil work.”
Working underground presents with challenges. Old Telecom copper lines dating back decades for example, are not always able to be located, despite an enormous amount of time put into locating existing buried infrastructures.
“When this happens it is all about communication and adaptability, though these situations crop up quite rarely given our detailed process to ensure we identify all the services in the ground.”
“We are approaching an exciting period of technology growth, with 5G mobile technology and IoT, or the Internet of Things, set to reshape how utilities and telco infrastructure is delivered.”
Pele says the company is uniquely positioned with its expertise in both the civil and utilities, as well as the technical construction processes this will entail.
“5G is going to revolutionise how we interact with our world, including how services are delivered to our homes”.
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Civtec supplies directional drilling and civil works, along with utilities and telecom network construction.
