Ngā iti Kahurangi — South Island pre-construction delivery

The problem

The South Island delivery covered a large number of small and remote schools. Before installation teams could work efficiently, each school needed reliable information on access, room conditions, measurements, asbestos constraints, material quantities and local operating requirements.

The existing survey process was not robust enough for the scale of repeated field work. In a multi-site programme, a small weakness in data capture can become a large downstream problem through rework, return visits, incorrect procurement or disrupted installation sequencing.

My role

I managed the pre-construction surveying and procurement-coordination workstream across the South Island. That included school engagement, survey planning, field-data quality, asbestos-status visibility, procurement inputs, issue escalation and handover information for delivery teams.

I also built a replacement Jotform survey application to standardise field capture. Mandatory fields and a consistent data structure made incomplete information easier to identify before it flowed into procurement or construction.

Importantly, this was not only a management role. I personally carried out the programme’s digital site-capture work in the field, including planning and flying automated aerial survey missions in DroneDeploy and completing Matterport 3D interior scans of school buildings. I used those capture workflows to create aerial/site models and navigable 3D interior models that formed part of the survey information provided to the Ministry of Education and supported pre-construction planning.

Digital site capture

The field-survey toolkit extended well beyond conventional measurements and photographs. My hands-on work included:

• planning and executing automated DroneDeploy flight paths for repeatable aerial site capture;
• carrying out drone surveying and photogrammetric capture to build spatial context and 3D site models;
• operating Matterport equipment to 3D-scan classrooms, halls and other internal spaces;
• planning scan positions and transitions so the resulting Matterport models remained navigable through rooms and doorways;
• checking capture completeness and returning to missing areas where required; and
• using the resulting digital models alongside room data, site plans, acoustic, lighting, electrical and asbestos information for Ministry of Education project planning.

That experience gave me practical familiarity with the full capture workflow — not just receiving a 3D model from a specialist, but understanding how the automated flight or scan has to be planned and executed in the real environment for the data to be useful downstream.

Programme mechanics

The work combined predictive programme controls with practical adaptation at site level. The programme had defined products, approval pathways and delivery expectations, but every school had different access windows, physical conditions, asbestos status and disruption sensitivities.

The operating model therefore linked:

• school contact and access planning;
• repeatable digital field surveys;
• DroneDeploy aerial capture and Matterport 3D scanning;
• room-level and site-level data;
• asbestos and safety dependencies;
• procurement and logistics inputs;
• live risk and issue visibility; and
• construction-readiness handover.

Scale

Across the South Island, the programme covered approximately 211 schools and 1,433 teaching spaces across three delivery bundles.

What this demonstrates

The useful lesson was not simply how to complete more surveys. It was how to turn distributed physical-site information into a controlled programme input so downstream teams could make decisions with fewer unknowns.

It also reflects the way I tend to work: I am comfortable owning the programme-level process while still getting hands-on with the technology used to capture, validate and understand the physical environment.