In order to meet its obligations as a building owner under the Building Act 2004, Wellington Electricity is undertaking a seismic resilience improvement programme across their distribution network with a focus on substation buildings.
Given the number and variation of substation sites on the Wellington Electricity network, a pragmatic decision was made to consent all external substation building modification and alteration works under the one resource consent to be issued by the Wellington City Council. This is known as a global resource consent.
In order to obtain a single consent that would be robust enough to cover a multitude of site specific variables, a collaborative approach to the programme between Wellington Electricity and the consenting authority was needed. This partnership was paramount in ensuring the scope, coverage and application of the global resource consent conditions were mutually acceptable and that potential interruption to the seismic resilience improvement programme was satisfactorily mitigated.
Edison’s in-house resources were instrumental in achieving this inaugural consent for the client, which in doing so can act as a precedent for engagement with the other councils in Wellington Electricity’s supply area, and for other network utility operators who are undertaking similar preventative maintenance.
Being issued with a global resource consent gives Wellington Electricity a solutions based outcome for the inevitable but as yet un-defined construction works required to improve substation building resilience to address earthquake prone buildings.
