A multi-million dollar project to strengthen the water supply resilience in Te Kūiti has reached a new milestone.

Waitomo District Council is pleased to announce that the contract for the Te Kūiti Water Supply Resilience Project has been awarded to HEB Construction Ltd.

The project was first approved by Council in October 2022 to improve the security of Te Kūiti’s water supply infrastructure after efforts to find an alternative water source was unsuccessful.

The total project budget is worth almost $10M and will be the largest spend on three waters infrastructure over recent years.

General Manager Infrastructure Services, Shyamal Ram says the contract award marks a significant investment in addressing longstanding issues within the town’s aging water supply network, which has been under increasing stress due to the current network setup and its storage capacity.

“The current water reticulation in Te Kūiti is configured to supply the properties first, with excess treated water filling the Hospital Reservoir for later storage.

“This means we do not have a direct filling line from the treatment plant to our reservoirs, which causes difficultly controlling our reservoir levels.  This results in our reservoirs taking days to fill when experiencing major watermain bursts. The new setup will also allow us to fill our reservoirs at night when electricity charges are lower, decreasing our operating costs.

“This critical infrastructure upgrade marks a pivotal investment in the future of Te Kūiti, delivering enduring improvements for our water network and communities for generations to come.”  

The contract was signed on 6 August between Hamish Dean, HEB Construction’s National Manager- Civil Construction (pictured left), and Shyamal on behalf of WDC.

 “We are excited to deliver this very important project for the community of Te Kūiti,” says Hamish.

“The HEB project team are looking forward to working with Waitomo District Council to deliver a fantastic result to improve the resilience of the water network.”

The project aims to enhance network resilience and reduce reliance on the Water Treatment Plant (WTP) by increasing overall storage capacity and improving flow efficiency.

Key objectives include:

• Constructing a new watermain to directly connect the main reservoirs to the WTP
• Replacing the existing reservoir adjacent to Te Kūiti Hospital with a larger, modern tank
• Expanding network storage to better manage peak demand and emergency situations

These upgrades are expected to reduce pipe stresses and provide more water resilience to the community.

Since the initial project approval, Council staff have spent considerable time gathering geotechnical information and developing a basic water model to identify the current status of the water network to see what the potential scope of the project would be. 

From here greater information and detail was gathered and the scope was confirmed. 

It was decided that a ‘design and build’ contract was the best value for money solution for Council, and a two-stage tender evaluation was completed. 

Physical construction is scheduled to commence in February 2026, with an anticipated completion date of December 2026. During this time, the design will be completed and materials ordered. 

Upon completion of the project, the new assets will be vested to the new Waikato Waters Ltd Council Controlled Organisation (CCO), for which WDC joined in July this year.

The loan raised to fund the project will also be taken on by Waikato Waters Ltd.

“When the project was first approved, Council was unsure what the future delivery of water services would look like, so the thought was to build it to ensure maximum benefit for the Te Kūiti community,” says Shyamal. 

ENDS-