Transportation Backbone
Opus : Creating the Backbone
Drive the highway from North Cape to the Bluff and you will be driving on some sixty- percent of roads either designed by or maintained by Opus.
Once part of the former Ministry of Works and Development, Opus has a proud record of building and designing most of New Zealand’s road networks over many decades and as such is one of the New Zealand Transport Agency's (formerly Transit New Zealand) preferred providers.
Looking at a map of New Zealand, SH1 could be construed as the ‘backbone’ of the country's transportation highway, connecting with the other highways and roads throughout the country. This road network infrastructure is the core of the country's economic and lifestyle transportation activity. Both people and industry rely on our roads for getting from one point to another and for transporting goods. They rely on this infrastructure's reliability and integrity as a conduit for our need to move around our rugged landscape.
Our expertise, coupled with our intimate local knowledge garnered through our local office network ensures we are able to develop and maintain this important roading system. Using state of the art technology, innovative and ‘best suited design’ that is cost effective within the country's relatively small economy, Opus engineers are at the forefront in civil, structural and asset management design.
We have also been responsible for a large part of the design and construction of other forms of infrastructure including railway stations, airports and shipping ports, hydro dams, wind farms, telecommunications infrastructure, water catchments reservoirs and water reticulation, wastewater disposal systems, and the conception and design of institutional buildings - such as schools, universities, hospitals, airport terminals, correctional facilities and administration buildings. These structures are likewise spread throughout the country and created to award winning standards.
Some recent transportation projects that Opus engineers have been working on include:
These projects are not only functional and met or exceeded our client’s requirements, but perhaps more importantly, have been designed to meet the demands of the immediate future and also the needs and requirements of the next century.
Not only do we design new roads, but we equally look at how we may preserve and maintain road infrastructure. Such examples are computer deterioration modelling for road asset management, the recycling of road pavements, the use of alternative materials for road pavements, and ‘travelwise’ programmes to encourage alternative means of travel.
We not only work in the transportation sector - our expertise in environmental management, water supply and wastewater management are all areas that will see us increasingly called upon up and down the country.
In architectural design and the construction of buildings, Opus has made a name for itself in the development of award winning institutional buildings. With the work we are doing for a number of universities our projects are again spread up and down the country.
As part of our strategy for business growth we are now taking our experience, expertise and innovation offshore and have very successfully integrated into the expanding and demanding markets of Australia, Canada and the UK. We now have 21 offices in Australia, seven in Canada, and eight in the UK and are rapidly expanding this number as our client base continues to increase.
In the UK we are working on the upgrading of infrastructure for a number of underground railway stations on the London Underground, the design of business park estates, underwater surveys and structural engineering for marine oil terminals, civil design for highway and road networks, and highway asset management.
In Canada we are providing solutions for a number of transportation authorities and are working on some high profile projects such as the Sea to Sky Highway, the Trans-Canada Highway, Kicking Horse Canyon, a number of bridges including the Port Main Bridge in British Columbia, and safety audits on a number of highways.
In Australia we operate in NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and are heavily involved with transportation infrastructure projects, water and building design. Some recent projects include the three new stations on the Epping to Chatswood rail line, asset valuation of Sydney International Airport, a number of roading networks in Western Australia, and a number of water sector and infrastructure projects in Queensland.
Opus is a leader and at the forefront of award winning expertise. We are well positioned to expand and meet the requirements and needs of modern society and will continue to ensure that our infrastructural ‘backbone’ and the ‘backbone ‘of the countries in which we work will continue to be well serviced over the ensuing years.