He said it was about building relationships with the six main contractors managing the demolition and rebuilding projects.
"I went there to find out how we could get a share of the billions of dollars worth of work that obviously has to be done in the rebuild," he said.
Mr MacGibbon said unless you visited the area it was impossible to understand the extent of the devastation and massive amount of money and effort that will be expended in putting things right.
He said CERA, the Christchurch City Council, Government and insurance companies still had some issues to resolve but once they were sorted out there were major opportunities for Wanganui business to get involved at lower tiers of the rebuild.
He said the scale of the rebuild was almost incomprehensible.
"There's something like 1200 commercial buildings that have to be demolished in the city's central business district. About 900 have come down so there's still 300 or 400 to go.
"But insurance companies were still working out the extent of their liabilities and that's holding things up."
Replacing those building was a task expected to take at least 10 years.
Mr MacGibbon said the cost of reinstating the water and sewerage infrastructure was estimated to be $2 billion to $5 billion. More than 120km of water mains and 300km of sewer pipes needed replacing.
"The total costs of the rebuild in just Christchurch city is between $20 billion and $30 billion.
"If you had a 10-year plan to complete the inner city rebuild then you're talking about building something the size of the Wanganui District Council complex every three days.
"And if you think the average home takes six months to build and there's 9000 of them to be done, building them one at a time would take 4000 years. Two a day and it's 2000 years.
"So when they're talking about a 10-year window then they're talking about creating 30,000 jobs to get it done," Mr MacGibbon said.
He said out in the residential areas there were 6000 to 9000 houses that will have to be demolished.
The six major contractors had formed an alliance and were leading the rebuilding and they were the ones Wanganui contractors needed to work with.
"The message I've got for them is that they need to commit because this a long-term project of a minimum of 10 years and they haven't really started yet. The relationship that you must develop is with those major contractors," he said.
"If locals want to get down there, they need to have a Work opportunities in quake hit city
presence and be committed for the long haul."
He said Christchurch was not the goose that laid the golden egg but it would be a job that will last for a long time and the city was very much "open for business".
Mr MacGibbon has more meetings planned to give local businesses a steer on how to go about being involved down south.
"The margin the main contractors have set may be at the low end of the scale but we're talking long-term work here. It's not just builders, plasterers and the like. There's opportunities for structural engineers and geo-technical specialists from Wanganui to get involved," he said.
"There's a lot of expertise in Wanganui that can be involved without those firms moving down there. Things like draughting and architectural services, accounting, contract costing. It's the physical work that happens down there."
He said the roll out of ultra-fast broadband in Wanganui and the fact it is now going into Christchurch will mean very good communications between the two cites.
For more information about opportunities in Christchurch, contact the council's economic development office in Guyton St.
