WELLINGTON STATION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 693, 20 November 1933, Page 2

WELLINGTON STATION

NEW B^iLpiNci W|LL PltOVIDE WiORK FOR M[ANY MEN IN CITY , MATERIALS [REQUIRED ' Wellington has waited wi'th ypmarkable patience for her new railway station, and now -that the deciision has been made after many years, probably has no. real eonception of the size of the job or of the importance of the work, not merely to Wellington, but to the Dominion generally. |Perhaps it is as well that the decision has been so long in coming, for panticularly welcome is the announcement of the Railways Board at present, when the greatest problem is to set under way work .that is necessary and work that will benefit the ■largest possible number of New Zealanders. The building trade runs through the country in so many branches that the benefit pf the comineneement of a big building is spread far beyond the centre in which the sitei work takes place. Ddrectly jand indirectly the building of the Wellington railway station wiil provide employment for a good many hundred men in both islands. It will be the fourth of a series of recent major public buildings, following upon the Auckland railway station, the National Ar.t Gallery and Dominion Museum, and the Dunedin Post Office. Though the decision is made no real start is likely to be made for some time yet, for a vast amount Qof preliminary work must be done in planning the details of approach on so large a construction, and such stocks of material as will be used in the station building are hot to be ordered to-day and delivered to-morrow. Certain of the materials, for instance, structural steel and reinforcing steel must be ordered from England and cannot be landed in Wellington for many wfeeks yet. The work before the eontractors calls also for spe'cial plant which cannot be brought to Wellington in a day or a week, and there are thousands of details to be considered separately and in relation to the wbole, so that when construction begins each section of the work will proceed to time-table. Seldom, in a major construction work does oue contractor complete the job, there may be two, three, or four sub-con-tractors, or considerably more than that. All their work must be so planhed that the job proeeeds as a whole. Time is very niuch the same as money on such a work as the building of a terminal railway station. A Very Big Job The contract figure, £339,173, Makes one sit hack, but it-stiil fails to give the average man a real idea of the size of the job. Some figures given a Wellington Evening Post reporter to-day by Mr. Andrew Fletcher, of the Fletcher Construction Gompany, give perhaps a better impression of the magnitude of the work. "The company h'as carried out some big works and has some in hand just now, the Art Gallery and the Dunedin Post Office," said Mr. Fletcher, "but the railway station is far and away the biggest building construction so far underfcak£n by our company in New Zealand. Of the total contract price at least 80 per cent. will be spent upon wages and in the purchase of New Zealand materials, so tba.t the New Zealand manufacturer and the New Zealand workinan are going to get a very fair spin indeed. In every direction where New Zealand materials ean be used the Railways Board ha& insisted that they must be used, and where material must be impor'bed it is laid down that Emjpire goods shall be used, nobably, of course, in steel requirements. "W'e cannot say yet how many men will be employed on the. job, but probably the number will be about 300, though not for some time as some months will go by before the work opens out into full swing. By that time at least as many men will be indirectly eniployed as a result of the station buiiding, some of them ia.s far away as Whangarei and as far south as Southland. For the first six months, perhaps, the work will be praotically oonfined to pile driving land foundation work.

Warning to Applicants Already applieations fbom men hoping for employment on the job are beginning to arrive, from Hawera, Blenheim, Christchurch, Nelson, Geraldine. It is impossible to place applicants from outside Wellington. For men to come to Wellington on the chance of being placed will just mean disappointment for them and worry for us. .Speaking again of the: amount of employment which will follow off the job, Mr. Fletcher said that a total of over a million super feet of timber will be required, whdte pine and pinus insignis for concrete hoxing, Southland beach, kauri, and rimu for framing and joinery. ,Into the concrete mixers will go approxhnately 14,650 cubic yards of crushed shingle, railed in from the Hutt Valley, 111,650 cubic yards of sand will be needed for concrete, hrickwork, and plastering', and 5040 to'ns of cement will be used before the work is completed. Nearly a million and three-quarters of hricks and fifteen tons of granite and marble will be ordered, and, as a small tonnage, but a strong numerical item, 80 tons of New Zealand-mad© nadls will be hammered in. i Underground a vast amount of material will be hidden away, nearly half a mile of 21, 15, and 9-ineh concrete piping, besides the smaller earthenware and cast-iron piping, and 1615 foundation piles are to be driven to an average depth' of about 30 feet, but some will go down to fifty feet. It wa.s unlikely that anyonfe would want to do it, remarked Mr. Fletcher, so they Would just have to take his word for it that if those piles were laid end for end there would be about ten miles of them. They will be driven by steiam hammer drivers, not by "monkeysj" and the estipxate of the coal required for this job alone is

150, |bns. TBe piles will bb of reipforij^d cdherbte) ' iron shod," and -yfrill be fifteeii by fi|teeh\iaa|4 siicteen by sixieen iriches in secticin. Maih Sub- Contracts The main sub-eontracts are as follows: — | iSteel fabricating and shaping, etc., William Cable and Co., Ltd. (£45,466 Qs 3d.) Probably £20,00.0 of this snb -contract price will go in wages to Wellington Wbrkmen'and men engaged in handling. the material. Thie steel members are ordered froM Messrs Dorman, Long, and Co., England, arid from the Steel Company of Scotland. The reinforcing steel, in rod forrhj will all he of British manuflacture. Wire, of which a h'uge quantity will be used for rod tying and box work, will come from the Firth Company, Wiarrington. iFibrous plasterj th'e Carrara Ceilihg Company, Ltd. (£5462). Plumbing ahd draini'aying, Messrs W. A. Chenery, Iitd. (£17,149 2s 8d). Granite and marble masott, New Zealand Marble Co., Ltd (£14,791 15s 2d). iGlazing, Messrs Phillipps and Impty, Ltd., Auckland. Nails, the Auto Machine Manufacturing Co., Wellington, and H. Hanson and Co., Ltd., Wellington. •Brick and concrete pipes, the Amal•gamated Rrick and Pipe Co. (Wellington) , Ltd. iShingle and sand, River Shingle and Sand, Ltd. Cement will be brought to Wellington by raal. Quantity Surveys. An important section of the workprelimiiiary to the consideration of tenders was carried out by Messrs Maltby and Sommerville in the drawing up of schedules of quantities upon which the guiding estdmate was prepared and upon which tenderers bas■ed their oalc^ljations. Schedujles so drawn up place tenderers on a level fpoting in the drawing up ofv their pilices — an .exceedingly intricate business — and greatly speed up the time in which tenders can be made. Such schedules are essential and must be checked and rechecked to the smlallest debail, and the provision of nlaster schedules to all tenderers saves an immeaise amount of time and worry and also the possibility of error wh'ich might Jead to serious complications.