NXN Apartments Project: A unique offering

With views over Nixon Park to the green slopes of Arch Hill, NXN Apartments in Auckland is a modern premises comprising 73 design-led apartments and five townhouses.

The Kingsland residential development is a mix of one, two and three-bedroom apartments on the ground floor through to level six, as well as four-storied townhouses on levels three through to six. Origin was delighted to work with BECA – Architects, Structural and Building Services, Dominion Construction, as well as the developer, Templeton Group, who have a firmly established reputation for carefully curated and quality homes.

Origin Fire’s Team Leader of Fire Engineering & Senior Fire Engineer, Sajeesh Nair, was the team lead for this project. He was requested to prepare a fire engineering report and passive fire protection specification for the seven-storied building. Sajeesh initially noted that this would be a large-scale project and therefore simply preparing a fire report would not be sufficient.

The Challenges

NXN apartments were designed to Acceptable Solutions to confirm compliance fire protection with the building code for building consent. Due to multiple stairwells and the large number of planned occupants, there were still some challenges faced with council queries. Lifts were also opening directly into apartments on some levels therefore Origin had to allow for smoke lobbies within apartments.

After the recommendation to peer review, the design was confirmed to be correctly described in the consent, tender and construction documentation. During the construction stage, Origin Fire was faced with numerous passive fire issues. Origin’s fire engineering team worked proactively during construction monitoring to ensure that all work was carried out in a compliant manner.

Taking a proactive approach

Sajeesh and the Origin team have worked on several apartment building projects previously, including large-scale developments. Their knowledge for this scale of work meant they were aware of passive fire issues that could potentially arise during construction, so it was agreed to prepare the passive fire protection specification during the design phase, as opposed to during construction.

As a result, Origin Fire was actively involved with the passive fire protection design from the very early stages of the design phase. This is advantageous to clients for several reasons, but mostly as it ensures a smooth consenting process and generates realistic pricing during tender stage. Downtime or wait times during construction due to designing and getting consent approval is virtually eliminated using this process.