The building the church plans to use for its children’s church programme last week.
The newest building at Zion Church’s community space in Te Awamutu is among Waipā projects caught up in potentially fraudulent engineering signoffs.
And the space – which the church had hoped would be open by June – is still not operational following subsequent delays reported to have cost the church “thousands”.
Two weeks ago, The News reported Waipā District Council confirmed it was one of more than 40 councils impacted by the actions of Jonathan Beau Hall of Kodiak Consulting Ltd, who allegedly completed and signed producer statements using the identities of chartered engineers without their permission.
At least 62 building consents in the Waipā are thought to be affected.
“Our focus is on supporting those impacted… as quickly as we can,” Waipā District Council’s group manager growth and regulatory services Wayne Allan said at the time.
Zion moved to its new Churchill St site – known as the Zion Hub – in June and has been completing work there with a mind to establish it as a “gift” to the Te Awamutu community, in the form of a new community space.
Last week, Zion senior leader Phil Strong confirmed the opening of a separate building next to the church’s new main hub – which the church plans to use to facilitate its children’s programme – has so far been delayed nearly two months as a new design has been completed by a new engineer.
A new building consent has since been approved by council, and building work was underway at the Churchill St site when The News visited last week.
Estimates are the room will now be finished by October, four months after initially planned.
Phil Strong
Zion was gifted the outside building by Habitat for Humanity – it was formerly used as a community room space at the organisation’s Palmer St site.
Strong said the church wanted the room to be a temporary building which could be moved if needed – and because of that it needed to have specifically engineered foundations.
In that process, church staff were referred to Kodiak, and a building consent was issued.
“In that consent a second engineer was named and when we rang him for advice on how to implement the design – he basically said: I’ve never seen these plans before in my life,” Strong said.
‘That was surprising, and we thought it a bit odd – we were just confused by the whole thing.
“We were obviously setting this space up with an expectation kids would be able to use it by June, and they’re still not able to, so that’s disappointing.
“Ultimately, while I can’t give you an exact number, it’s cost thousands to get modified and reinstalled. We’ve now had to pay for the truck to come back and move it twice, we’ve had to pay those additional engineering fees, and we’ve had to pay the builders to prepare it to be reinstalled.
“Those are obviously all cost which we weren’t initially anticipating.”
He remains philosophical.
“We’re back on track now, and hopefully it will be a speedy process from here.
“At the end of the day, this a relatively minor project. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like for someone who has a commercial building project, or even a house which has been affected.
“As I keep saying we really feel like this is space is here to be some kind of gift to others, and sometimes we’re required to fight for things that are important to us.
“The community hub is working really well – we’ve had lots of community groups in, and the church family is enjoying it too.”
As well as a meeting space, Zion Hub has counselling, training and board rooms, a studio for audio and visual recording and an administration hub.
