Bars, rebar and builders - Inside Waikeria prison's $750m build

Saturday, 31 August 2019

What the new build at Waikeria Prison will eventually look like. It's scheduled to open in early 2022.

Multiple trucks rumble down the road and it's hard hats, safety glass and high-vis clothing as the new normal for Waikeria prison these days and for many more days to come.

The Department of Corrections facility is undergoing a significant build to help with the country's growing prison population.

Waikeria sits 16 kilometres south of the Waikato town of Te Awamutu - with the prison home to over 700 men all on varying sentences ranging from minimum to high security.

It used to be New Zealand's largest prison before a 2012 Corrections reshuffle that closed some of the nation's older prisons including some units at Waikeria. It's capacity now stands at 806.

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But it's poised to once again be in the title race in 2022 when the $750 million new build is finished - it's a project that will see a 600-bed facility constructed, including a 100-bed mental health unit.

It's another chapter in one of the country's longest running prison sagas. Waikeria opened in 1911 making it the country's second-oldest prison, behind only Invercargill which was opened in 1910.

New Zealand's track record of incarceration before Waikeria isn't too flash. In 1838 the Bay of Islands provided the first place of detention - an old sea chest with holes drilled in it.

Then until 1854, New Zealand's worst offenders were transported to Tasmania and New Zealand's few early jails were little more than mud cottages that prisoners could pull down with their hands. Imposing structures like the Victorian walled facade of Mount Eden followed as attitudes to crime and punishment ebbed and flowed with the social mores of the day.

At its peak it's estimated that 750 contractors will be working on the new build inside Waikeria Prison.

In 1910, The Government turned to the then new concept of reformative detention. Waikeria Reformatory Farm was the result, based on giving young offenders a chance to gain skills vital to the country's growing economy, so they could return to society a reformed man.

The belief that inmates can be reformed before they leave the wire and return to the community still drives thinking at Waikeria, with the build announced in June 2018 aimed at contributing.

It's not to the scale of the mega-prison proposed by National when they were in government in 2016. Then the plan was to build a 1500-cell facility in a $1 billion public-private partnership build on the same site, in order to deal with a rapidly growing prison population.

Labour's plan is for 600 beds to replace the current 100-year-old high-security unit of 426 beds. There is a further 380-bed low-security unit on-site as well.

The 21-hectare site was a farming paddock on the prison and as a result of the build the prison farm herd has been lowered by about 250 cows.

Early earthworks began last year said Kevin Smith, Department of Corrections site liaison, Integration and Consolidation Manager and bulk earthworks are now underway.

'That is well advanced with a particular portion of the contract due to be finished around October this year. We've still got heaps of other activities, such as piling, deep in-ground services like power, water, and all those other things; laying trenches for security equipment. As part of the piling, we also have steelwork for building platforms.'

Impressions of the new build at Waikeria Prison.

One of the first buildings to have a major part finished was the gatehouse platform. It boasts 139 piles and 120 tonnes of steel and it took about 200 truckloads of concrete to complete - with the pouring beginning at the start of August.

It's a large operation with three piling rigs operating at one time. About 30 piles a day are driven down between 19 to 30 metres. All the piling is due to be completed around December.

A number of the subcontractors are local with that being a requirement of the contract.

There's currently about 130 contractors and subcontractors on-site - that will eventually extend to about 750 on the ground at any one time during peak construction.

They've been lucky so far and haven't lost any significant time due to weather.

Department of Corrections' Kevin Smith is the site liaison, integration and consolidation manager for the new build at Waikeria.

'For me as a non-technical construction person, as I was a prison operator previously, it's been quite a learning curve,' explained Smith. 'It's like a giant jigsaw as there is a lot of moving parts that are very complex and everything has to gel together. We need to make sure things are happening when they're supposed to be happening.'

And it's no wonder given the scale of the final build.

The new facility is a complete stand-alone high security which will support the remainder of the prison.

The high security unit is a stand alone facility within Waikeria Prison.

The 100-bed mental health area is also new territory for the Department of Corrections.

Around one in five New Zealanders experience mental illness in their lifetime. However, in prison, more than nine out of 10 people will face a mental health or a substance abuse disorder during their life.

'So we are engaging with the DHB's, mental health professionals, local iwi in developing a model of care, ' said Smith. 'That is still under development so it's early stages for that in terms of how it might operate.

Construction on the new build at Waikeria Prison is well underway with bulk earthworks scheduled to be finished by October and the piling by December.

'It's going to be a joint or shared operating model based around both custodial and health professionals - a large number of those.'

It's not the first time Waikeria prison has worked alongside a mental health provider as there were talks in 1912 of combining the prison and Tokanui Hospital to cater for 'the feeble-minded, criminally insane and sexual offenders,' as medicine described them then.

This never happened and Tokanui Hospital closed in March 1988. But in the early days, there was a lot of co-operation between the two institutions and between 1920 and 1926 patients and prisoners worked side-by-side on the prison farm and in the nurseries.

Apart from the mental health space, Waikeria is going to be run along similar lines now.

The two X shaped facilities are the prisoners accommodation.

'The build does let us explore how we might do things differently and there is certainly lots more amenities within the facility to assist with rehabilitative type tasks so lots more programme rooms, lots more education spaces, lots more interview rooms, a bit of open ground.

'Bars are being moved from windows, those types of things, and it's not as stark looking a design as you would normally see in prison. I've referred to it myself as quite commercial-industrial looking.'

As for how the new rebuild will look there are 27 separate areas being built. Within these are two major accommodation blocks that made up of eight units housing 480 prisoners in total.

The management unit will cater for 20 people.

The new build won't the stark design of the aging Wakeria Prison facility.

'The mental health precinct can hold 100 and that is broken down into 12 units - so you can manage them in small cohort groups so you haven't got a large number of prisoners that you are dealing with in those kinds of spaces.'

Additional to that through the central spine are a number of support-type buildings. There is a full-size rugby field in the middle - along with three hard stand court areas which are for either tennis or basketball.

There is a sports hall which has a fulltime gymnasium, cardio room, weights, a classroom for teaching health and well-being and a library and classrooms.

'One thing we have inside the wire is a whare which is right in the middle - so that will be used for cultural events. It is a multi-purpose building and multicultural - so it might be used for programme graduations or whānau hui, it could be used for church services, used for staff meetings.

A series of industry spaces are also part of the design. Although what will go in them is yet to be decided they'll complement waste management and recycling facilities and two horticultural areas of 2400 square metres each which provide prisoners with work.

The plan is that that current high security blocked will be closed down with prisoners moved in a staged programme into the new facility.

'We can't take 300 out of there on one day so it is phased thing.'

The increased capacity will allow for more of the prisoners who come from the Waikato and Bay of Plenty to remain closer to family and post release support networks.

The current high security unit will eventually be closed down once the new build is finished.

'As part of this commissioning process build, we are working with local iwi groups both in terms of contributing to the design, monitoring ecological outcomes and visual mitigation as well as working with them in to look at increased employment opportunities for those people in our care post-release.'

The build isn't just offering better facilities but also allowing the opportunity for some inmates to work on the project.

'From the outset of the project, the contractor has been quite keen to engage in that initiative [using prisoners to build the prison].

'I think every subcontractor has some work-to-release prisoner with them. As part of the subcontractor induction process, they get advised on the release to work initiative and they get the option whether they opt-in or opt-out - today everyone has opted-in, bar one highly specialised field.'

Three inmates have been released on parole during the build so far and have been offered a full-time job working on their old prison.

'Although they're working out there with all the other employees we want to normalise the whole environment, like going to the cafeteria and buying a coffee, pie and bits and pieces.

'We try to normalise that which will assist with re-integrating them in a more successful way than what probably would have occurred otherwise.'

Given the work is happening inside a working prison - security is tight with more than 1000 Ministry of Justice (MOJ) checks done to cover every contractor.

'We are anticipating that we might have to do about 8000 to 10,000 MOJ checks through the life of this project so we had to actually create some positions to support that.'

There have so far been no security concerns.

'But in terms of emergency management we have run a couple of exercises both and fire drills in the buildings but also around a couple of other things.'

Sometimes being prison has its advantages.

'A contractor may have a heart attack for example and we have nurses on-site who can get there sooner than an ambulance.'

It's something that's been noted by the builders.

Priscilla Steel, Communication and Stakeholder manager for Cornerstone Infrastructure Partners said all contractors had been fully briefed around security.

'The feedback from the team is that they feel comfortable working on-site because they have been preparing us well. We don't really have any security concerns because we all know what will happen should there be a need,' Steel said.

By 2022 the giant pieces of the prison jigsaw will be in place - and the rumble of the trucks down to a low murmur as Waikeria continues into its second century.