Waikato Business News April/May 2021

VIBRANT CAMBRIDGE
‘Great team’ key for
Construction Advantage
When the Little Thinkers Kindergarten in
a new Cambridge subdivision opened on
time for the new term this year teacherowners
Alicia Oliver and Ilonca Raymond
breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Two years in conception,
the new build was still
in the planning stages
when the Covid-19 lockdown
brought business across New
Zealand to a halt in March
last year.
Luckily, the team at local
commercial construction firm
Construction Advantage met
the demanding circumstances
head-on.
Construction Advantage
makes a point of detailed client
consultation. Lockdown meant
it could not follow its usual
practice of careful face-to-face
meetings with Alicia and Ilonca
in the lead up to the build’s start.
Not daunted, the team
designed and consented the
three-room, high-vaulted project
over Zoom, keeping Ilonca
and Alicia in the loop via email.
But, says Construction a timber-framed roof structure were happy to let us be in contact
disruption of Covid, the build-
Advantage director John on a 45-degree angled roof on
with the architect so that ing was still finished, as per the
Mason, the result required the high profile site, but it gives we could design the building original time line.
an accelerated delivery programme
the centre a spacious, quality according to what we wanted. “During lockdown, we
starting in July 2020.
Despite the Covid delays, the
Construction Advantage team
met the original completion
date of December 1, allowing
the centre to open for term one
feel,” John says.
Ilonca says they could not
fault Construction Advantage.
“I have owned my own kindergartens
in Hamilton running
out of renovated houses. Alicia
As we are not only the owner
of Little Thinkers, we are also
teachers, teaching in the classrooms,
we wanted to ensure
that the building was workable
for us.
were kept informed via email
of where we were at, in terms
of the build. Our building was
started in July and we took over
at the beginning of December.
Even after we took over, they
this year.
Oliver and I were keen to start “Construction Advantage were very supportive of any
For the company, Covid-
19 was just one of the challenges
the kindergarten posed.
Detailed planning and coordination
was needed to carry out
the build in conjunction with
busy adjacent subdivision and
tenant works.
our own kindergarten in Cambridge
as we could not find one
with a similar philosophy here.
“We were fortunate to be
contacted by the developer
of the subdivision and John
Mason the owner of Construction
Advantage. They were
were amazing throughout this
whole project. We felt that we
were an integral part of the process,
always welcome to come
on site and definitely our ideas
were always valued. When we
had our first meeting with them,
they were very confident that
issues that arose and are still
contactable now five months
later.
“We cannot fault Construction
Advantage. They were so
supportive of us and so happy
for us to be fully part of this
“As well, it was time consuming
and a challenge to build vision in early childhood and ished on time. Even with the extremely supportive of our the whole project would be fin-
Continued on page
36
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