Takitimu North Link

Contractor’s newsletter - Te karere a te kaikirimana

13 June 2025

There are 3 bridges under construction over Minden Gully. The main alignment deck (centre) will be poured over the coming weeks and the off-ramp (left) is in use for construction vehicles.

Shifting gear for the winter season / Kua huri te aronga mō te kaupeka takurua

Winter sees our Takitimu North Link project crews shift focus from bulk earthworks to building structures, environmental controls, planting, and drainage. When the ground is very wet, there’s a risk to safety and the environment to keep doing earthworks, but the rest of the project remains in full swing.

We have 6 bridges under construction at State Highway 2/Fifteenth Ave, SH29 Takitimu Drive Toll Road (TDTR), Smiths Farm, Wairoa River and Minden Gully, and work on these will continue for the remainder of the year. Our drainage crew are installing 3 large culverts between Cambridge Road and SH29/TDTR over winter, as well as local network drainage in the Te Mete area. Check out the photos in this edition to see progress across the site.

In these months where we see more rainfall, our environmental team are continuingly checking the site and working alongside crews ensuring all the environmental controls they have installed are holding up in the diverse weather conditions.

Nō te taenga mai o te takurua kua huri te aro o ngā kāhui mahi o te Ara o Takitimu ki te Raki, mai i ngā tūkari nunui, ki te whakatū hanganga, ngā whakahaere taiao, te whakatipu me te hopuwai.  Ina tino mākū te whenua, he mōrearea ki te haumaru tangata me te taiao ki te tūkarikari tonu, engari kei te kaha tonu te koke whakamua o ētahi atu mahi.

E 6 ngā arawhiti e hangaia ana ki Te Ara Matua 2/Fifteenth Ave, SH29 Takitimu Drive Rori Utu(TDTR), Smiths Farm, Te Awa o Wairoa me te Riu o Minden, ā, ka haere tonu ngā mahi mō te roanga o te tau.  E whakauru ana tō mātou kāhui awakeri i ngā karawata nunui e 3 i waenga o Cambridge Road me SH29/TDTR hei te takurua, me te whatunga hopuwai paetata ki te rohe o Te Mete.  Tirohia ngā whakaahua kei tēnei putanga e kite ai koe i ngā kokenga.

I ēnei marama ka piki te karawhiu o te ua, ā, ka auau te tirotiro a te kāhui taiao i te wāhi mahi me te mahi tahi ki ngā kāhui mahi ki te whakarite mēnā e pakari tonu ana ngā whakahaere taiao kua whakaurua, i te wā o ngā huarere tuatini.

Planting season underway guided by maramataka

This year’s planting programme is underway and will see 160,000 plants put in the ground over the next 3 months, including 80,000 native plants supplied by local hapū nurseries. This is just over double the number of plants supplied in 2024 with numbers set to increase to 167,000 in 2026 and 2027, respectively.  

Commercial nurseries will supply the remainder of the 925,000 plants needed for the entire project. This year's first stage of planting began alongside SH29/Takitimu Drive Toll Road State Highway 29 planting over 7000 wetland species – flaxes, cabbage trees, reeds and grasses. The area is part of the wider Kopurererua Valley. The site posed some challenges especially with the recent heavy rain adding to the already wet swampy area. 

Our planting and landscape team are guided by maramataka as to the best time to plant. Maramataka is a Māori science calendar of knowledge that has accumulated over many generations. It follows a lunar cycle, using the marama (moon) as an indicator of the natural rhythms and cycles of the taiao (environment). The effects of each marama are most apparent at moonrise or moonset. It’s useful to guide activities such as planning, seed collecting, sowing and planting. Working with maramataka provides a way to understand and live in the natural environment. Maramataka can vary from region to region however there can be some similarities between each maramataka phase.

The maramataka calendar begins in June and July with the reappearance of the Matariki star cluster signalling the beginning of the Māori New Year. Matariki is a time to celebrate by coming together with whānau (family) and to remember those who have passed on. It’s also a time to celebrate and enjoy sharing the harvests or bounty from the previous year.

This year’s Matariki public holiday is celebrated on 20 June – Mānawatia a Matariki — Happy Māori New Year!

One of the SRPs called ‘Iain’ operating during a large rain event. The forebay on the left is slowing the water down before going over the level spreader into the main body of the pond. You can see the difference in water quality from the forebay to the main body of the pond, it's working great!

Spice up your ponds

Aotearoa New Zealand has been experiencing a lot of rain as we settle into winter and the Bay of Plenty has certainly had its fair share. Heavy rainfall on site puts a lot of pressure on the environment and we have ways to manage it. Environmental Manager, Stephanie Kirk, fills us in on the important role of ponds on site, including their creative naming strategy for easy pond identification.

How many ponds on site?

We currently have 34 ponds on site (24 Sediment Retention Ponds (SRPs), 9 Decanting Earth Bunds DEBs).

What do they do?

Ponds are one of the tools we have in our environmental erosion sediment control toolkit. SRPs and DEBs capture and treat runoff from the site to help clear the water up before discharging back into the environment. 

Erosion control measures are key to ensuring that our ponds on site can work efficiently. A variety of methods are used within each catchment including drop out pits, cut off drains, check dams, bunds, pipe drop structures, geotextile, hydroseed and progressive stabilisation, and work in tandem with the ponds. 

We like to think of it as an ‘erosion and sediment control recipe’ with each area needing its own unique recipe to get it working the way we want it. 

Ponds are the last step in our onsite water treatment and work in combination with floc sheds to help the water clean-up more efficiently during rain events. Each pond and floc shed is carefully sized to suit a particular catchment area and placed in various locations across the site to cover each work area. The bigger the catchment, the bigger the pond required. Generally, our ponds are sized between 200 – 300m3 per hectare of catchment diverted to them. 

How are they performing?

Pond management and performance is a constantly evolving task. Large rain events do put the ponds under pressure and things can happen where we need to tweak things to get the best out of our ponds. When it’s raining, you won’t find our team hiding away inside. You’ll see our crew out on site, soaking wet, walking the catchments, checking how the ponds are performing and making any changes needed.

Wildlife and ponds

We often find wildlife in our ponds such as ducks, grey herons, eels (tuna) and many other bird species. When we decommission our ponds onsite, we make sure we check them for any eels and relocate these back into the streams, in one pond we found 21 eels!

Naming the ponds

We give all of our pond’s names. From Andrew to Richard, Rhino to Splashy all of our ponds have personalities and giving them memorable names helps the crews treat them like part of their team. Some of these ponds have been on site with us for more than 3 years now and it’s much easier to remember where ‘Richard’ is instead of SRP-CH1290-MA.

We have 5 x DEBs on site in the Wairoa Valley named after the spice girls – Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty. 

• Best behaved pond on site – Te Oturu
• Worst behaved pond – Richard
• Largest (2,211m3) and first built pond – OG (original gangster)

This is Richard the SRP in the Te Mete valley. Despite his ‘worst behaved pond’ reputation, he's been doing a great job lately!

Harrison Road drainage installation

“It was an exciting time for the drainage and utilities team the day the Harrison Road stormwater outfall pipe was installed. This was a technical operation requiring lots of coordination involving a special haulage recovery truck with a winch to secure the pipe and control its decent down the steep bank, as well as abseiling and construction teams all working together.

"The 36 metre, 4 tonne pipe was carefully lowered into position over the slope from Harrison Road. Fantastic teamwork from everyone involved!" Adam Trewin – Drainage and Utilities Manager.

Sharing information and experiences key to site visits

With the onset of winter, we’ve had lots of special guests visit the site keen to get a firsthand look at the progress. These visits prompt great discussions about how large infrastructure projects deliver the massive and multi-discipline programme of work required to achieve great outcomes.

Each year since construction began, we’ve welcomed civil engineering students from Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology to site.

These visits are a real highlight for the students says Toi Ohomai Academic Leader, Rachel Beaton. “It connects theory and practice in a meaningful way, helping our students to be industry ready.” 

“They get to see their classroom learnings come to life in one of New Zealand’s biggest roading projects, right on their doorstep. The real project experience is invaluable, and classroom discussions often link back to what we’ve seen on the site visits.”

Tauranga City Council operations team.

Western Bay of Plenty District Council Mayor James Denyer and Councillors.

NZTA Waka Kotahi executive leadership team.

Latest project photos

Western tie-in – looking west towards SH2 you can see the construction of the large Oturu Culvert and the approximate location of where the Takitimu North Link ties into the existing SH2.

Te Mete Valley – Looking west, you can see the path of the Takitimu North Link stretching into the distance. On the right side of the photo, the wetland currently under construction.

Wairoa Road – looking west on a stunning day, the base of the photo is fill 9 now built up to its full height of structural fill.

Wairoa River Bridge – our team has placed 40 of the 80 bridge beams. The rest of the beams are arriving over the next few months.

Smiths Farm Road bridge – Looking from the base of Smiths Farm to Cambridge Road Bridge you can see the construction of the Smiths Farm Bridge.

Takitimu Drive flyover – on the left-hand side of this photo where the super structure is being completed. On the right-hand side you can see the slip lane under construction.

More information

Read more and sign up for updates about the project at:
nzta.govt.nz/takitimunorth

Takitimu North Link Stage 1 Project Team
Te Tira Mahi o Te Ara o Takitimu Wāhanga Tuatahi

Phone - waea ki 0800 865 776
Email - īmēra info@takitimunorthlink.co.nz
Website - paetukutuku nzta.govt.nz/takitimunorth