EECA Awards 2014: Rebuilding a green Christchurch

The bi-annual EECA Awards celebrate New Zealand's most efficient and environmentally-friendly businesses. Photo / Supplied

The EECA Business Awards celebrates organisations and community groups making efficiency and environmental concerns part of what they do. Tonight is this year’s award ceremony – with a special category for the Christchurch rebuild.

Engineer Jason Bretherton can vividly recall the mad scramble out of bed in the early hours of September 2010 to check on his kids after the first earthquake hit his hometown of Christchurch.

It's also become a defining point in his career at Opus International Consultants as he and his engineering colleagues work to rebuild parts of the city destroyed by the quakes.

"From an engineer's point of view we function by responding to those sorts of events," he says.

Bretherton, who heads up Opus' Christchurch-based mechanical and electrical engineering team, says the rebuild has entered a phase that means taking the rebuild vision and introducing the best in new technology to create a smart, efficient city for the future.

"The opportunities that are now in front of us are about building a green city, an energy efficient city, one where transportation infrastructure works a whole lot better than it did prior. It's such a unique opportunity."

Opus is one of four finalists, alongside Christchurch Energy Action, Tait Communications and TM Consultants, in a special category created this year for the EECA Awards to recognise people, organisations and projects working to improve energy use in Christchurch's rebuild.

Bretherton says the biennial EECA Awards, which celebrate excellence and innovation in energy efficiency or renewable energy, affirm that the work Opus is doing is leading edge and driving change in the marketplace.

Opus' entry in EECA's Christchurch Energy Champion Award contains diverse projects - from energy efficiency technology for schools, a riverside promenade through to large-scale commercial developments, including new offices for the firm.

While he finds it difficult to single out a particular project Bretherton is proud of the work Opus has done for Tait Communications on eight acres of rural land next to the company's existing manufacturing facility.

Bretherton says Tait had an aspirational masterplan for its proposed campus and surrounding land, including a desire to cut energy costs by 40 per cent, but a collaborative workshop in conjunction with the client really teased out what was important to them.

"You can create a vision but fundamentally the business drivers behind that need to stick as well."

This article is an Element Advertising Promotion. For the full list of finalists at tonight's EECA Awards, visit eecabusiness.govt.nz/awards-2014/finalists.