‘World- class’ protection plan
A HORROR flood in Melbourne’s Victorian State Library was a stark reminder how badly things could go wrong when Impact Project Management was preparing to run the revamp of Wellington’s National Library.
Impact Project Management director Garth Palmer says he talked to people in Melbourne about the day they turned up to work to find water pouring down the steps after a pipe had burst in the basement after renovations.
It was a clear reminder of what could go wrong, and the care that had to be taken.
‘‘For the National Library it was all about precious documents from New Zealand and around the world. Some of them are one-off and they’re priceless. Even though there’s been a value of a billion dollars put on them, they can’t be replaced.’’
A major issue for the National Library project though, was that the building’s new systems, such as the environmental controls and plumbing, had to be put in place while a big part of the collection stayed inside the building, even if it was carefully wrapped and boxed.
‘‘We were replacing pipework right above the collections and we had people clambering over them as well. So we had to build scaffolding and protect things from dust, dewater pipes and then recharge them.
‘‘The chances of causing damage were really high,’’ Mr Palmer says. ‘‘We were faced with the fact that we could potentially end up being front page news if we flooded the basement of the National Library.’’
There were already concerns with leaks down the wall in one area, where polythene had been put up on the ceiling to collect water which was drained into a bucket in the corner of the room. So it was all work that needed doing but that didn’t stop the library’s staff from being hugely protective of their collections.
‘‘A lot of the library people have worked there for a long time and they’re really passionate about the collections. I think if there was a fire there, some of them would chuck their kids out of the building after they had chucked the collections out,’’ he says.
‘‘So we had to do a lot of work to convince them we were managing the project well, and it was good that we achieved it on budget and on time.’’
The care they showed in the project was given the thumbs up by Vicki Humphrey, former head of conservation at the British Library, who was directed to oversee the collection protection measures being taken.
‘‘In her opinion, we were world class in what we were doing.’’
He is also pleased with the amount of environmentally controlled storage space that the library now has.
‘‘We now have 100 per cent of the collections in that environment so we have achieved a hell of a lot and they will be preserved for future generations.’’
Mr Palmer says as project managers it was Impact’s job to deal with any surprises or changes in plans.
A major change was a move to increase the scale of the project. Initially, the project involved only replacing the roof and boosting the collection spaces, but this would not improve the public areas on the ground floor.
‘‘At the end of the original project, you’d walk back into the ground floor, and there’d be no change at all. So with some additional funding we were able to refurbish the public spaces and the staff areas and the ground floor area have now been completely refurbished.’’
‘‘Now it will be a magnet for people to go in there and people will be able to easily access [their] family lineage, and whatever else people want to research.’’