Capital Hall

McKee Fehl has completed multiple student residential redevelopments across the city of Wellington creating central living and learning space for more than 1,000 students.

McKee Fehl fast tracked this redevelopment to transform an ageing office block into the Capital Hall student accommodation at 139-143 Willis Street. Cheops Holdings purchased the building in June 2016 and entered an agreement with The Victoria University of Wellington to redevelop this into central city accommodation. Built in 1986, the original building had undergone multiple purposes, renovations and seismic re-strengthening efforts.

The ten-month project included a fast-tracked ECI design and build process with overlap between detailed design and construction. This was overcome by negotiating staging documentation and staged consents with Wellington City Council.

Project cost control was driven by working collaboratively with the designers and subcontractors to ensure that design solutions were sympathetic with the client’s preferred option in terms of performance and end value.

The Capital Hall project team adopted a considered and strategic approach to minimise the construction impact on neighbouring tenants and the public. This was achieved through careful relationship management, coordination and consulting. Appropriate site access points were identified and noise and interference planning was implemented. For example: noisy work was restricted to unoccupied areas/times and temporary acoustic hording walls were constructed.