Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Program

About two months later, a program management team from MWH (now Stantec), with Mark Simister as regional executive, was brought in by Vero and AA Insurance to manage and coordinate the repair and rebuilding effort for a significant portion of their claims.

Mark was responsible for laying the program foundations during initial mobilisation and engagement. This approach enabled the program delivery team to rapidly assess and deal with damaged properties, sourcing and managing a multitude of local engineers, architects, quantity surveyors, builders, and contractors. Six months later, when on 22 February 2011 a devastating aftershock hit the city of Christchurch, the program team was able to rapidly respond with essential make-safe and emergency works.

By April 2011, the team had tackled more than 1,000 make-safe repairs (including many urgent demolition jobs), most of which were completed within one day of receiving the request. In September, the scope of work had expected around 2,500 residential projects, but that number had expanded five-fold.

On 22 February 2015—just four years later—the contract was officially wound up, with over 14,000 projects having been resolved.

The Vero program was recognised as the best performing team across the recovery program.