Bay firm completes seven-figure Weta contract

Your Solutions founders Adam Satherley and Troy Morgan have pulled off an industry-beating deadline to outfit Weta Digital's new Wellington offices. Photo / Paul Taylor

Weta Digital's new Wellington offices are complete, thanks to a collective Hawke's Bay effort.

Taradale shop fitters Your Solutions recently completed the seven-figure contract, fitting out areas such as screening rooms, kitchens, toilets and offices for 174 employees.

Managing director Adam Satherley said Weta's landlord, Ray and Tom McKimm of Napier-based Big Save Furniture, lobbied hard for the job to go to Your Solutions.

"If it wasn't for their support, we probably wouldn't have got that project," he said.

"They stood by us and said they would wear any penalties - they had that much confidence we would achieve the goal."

Your Solutions brought their workforce, hiring four houses to accommodate them and Hawke's Bay sub-contracting firms Best-Forsyth Electrical and Advanced Plumbing.

Project manager Troy Morgan said the 11-week timeline was a "lofty" ambition which no Wellington firm was willing to take on.

"We said yes, through youthful exuberance or whatever."

A founder and director of the company, he said it was about three years since he had been on the frontline.

"Because of the timeline and nature of the work, it was going to be too stressful for one of our foremen so I went down myself," he said.

Award-winning Weta Digital was founded by Sir Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk in 2007. It has won five Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, King Kong and Avatar.

Adam Satherley and Troy Morgan founded Your Solutions six years ago. They met when apprentices at FPG in Napier.

When they formed their company, Mr Satherley was project managing shop fitting and Mr Morgan was a self-employed builder.

"There was quite a bit of work in the first three years but it is starting to level off now," Mr Morgan said.

"We now do bigger jobs but do them better. About 70 per cent of our work is outside Hawke's Bay."

The Weta budget was not unusual "but not to do it in 11 weeks".

"Typically that would be a four to five-month job, but we thought it was pretty do-able."

Big Save Furniture opened its first furniture store in Paraparaumu in 1973 and 20 years later became the country's biggest retail furniture chain.

In 2007 Ray McKimm bought the former British American Tobacco site in Ahuriri.

Renamed the Ahuriri Business Park, Big Save uses some of its 5.6ha as its distribution centre.