The Genesis of SCIRT

At the beginning, there was an alliance. Multiple contractors collaborated with government agencies for the greater good of an earthquake-battered community craving a resilient rebuilt city. It was the genesis of SCIRT.

On September 4, 2010, as darkness still engulfed myriad towns, the first earthquake wave rolled across the Canterbury Plains west of Christchurch, liquefying land and breaking buildings but sparing lives.

The South Island’s largest city was left reeling, badly bruised but still standing after the 7.1-magnitude quake and numerous aftershocks.

A few months later, on February 22, 2011, a fatal 6.3-magnitude earthquake thundered through Christchurch, leaving 185 people dead and escalating the damage to infrastructure by an order of magnitude.

The city rebuild suddenly morphed into a multi-faceted, massive task beyond the usual jurisdictions. And the government took an extraordinarily ambitious move into an interventionist model.

Facing a rebuild of immense scale and scope, the government sought value for money, a quick, effective and flexible response, and probity.

The destructive nature of the February quakes and bruising aftershocks required a high-level, innovative solution: a delivery vehicle capable of managing the huge scale and complexity of the infrastructure rebuild; an instant organisation; an entity that came to be named SCIRT (Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team).

Tags:Disasterinfrastructurerebuild