Construction, Features

Porter Press Extra: Isaac Group

Isaac Construction enjoys a long history of providing quality construction products and services on projects of all sizes and complexities

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Issac Construction has more than 470 staff working in the South Island at any one time

Matching machine availability with an island-wide scale is a challenge. Especially when you’re working to the scale that multi-disciplined construction company Isaac Group operates at. That’s where a solid working relationship with Porter Hire comes into play.

A stalwart of the civil contracting industry in the South Island for more than 70 years, Isaac Construction enjoys a long history of providing quality construction products and services on projects of all sizes and complexities.

They like to say everything is covered “from residential driveways to airport runways”.

The company boasts more than 470 staff working in the South Island at any one time, from Dunedin to Nelson/Marlborough, the West Coast, and many places in between.

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Isaac Construction relies on Porter Hire’s extensive range and expertise to ensure smooth and efficient operations across a variety of projects

They provide asphalt, chip sealing, quarrying, general and heavy civil construction, and traffic management services to numerous customers.

To ensure client expectations are met regardless of the size of the project, Isaac Construction enlists the assistance of Porter Hire as one of their key supply partners to help provide extra horsepower out in the field.

“Hiring machinery through Porter Hire gives us flexibility when we need it,” says Issac’s Canterbury contracting resource manager, Terry Rockhouse.

Meeting diverse project demands

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“The service they provide runs really smoothly for us and means we can deliver for clients.” Those clients include local, city, and regional councils, NZTA, airports, ports, KiwiRail, commercial businesses, and private developers.

“Jeremy Coleman at Porter Hire is one of my go-tos for anything,” says Terry. “He’s based on the West Coast but that’s no barrier to him being able to get machinery out to us when we need it, wherever it’s needed, such as in Canterbury or the Nelson region.

“We like to plan ahead, but, of course, occasionally, there will be situations where we need a quick response, and Porter Hire always delivers. Their network is so big that, generally speaking, they will always be able to come up with a solution.”

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Issac Construction’s clients include local, city, and regional councils, NZTA, airports, ports, KiwiRail, commercial businesses, and private developers

Naturally, an entity the size of Isaac Construction has an impressive machine fleet all of its own. But strategically, it works better for some projects to hire gear in.

If there’s a through-line to what will generally come from Porter Hire, Terry says it’s bigger machinery — and that’s no surprise when you consider Isaac Construction’s bread-and-butter work.

The exponential growth of sub-divisions in post-quake Christchurch, along with complex multi-disciplinary central city and town centre road and infrastructure upgrade projects throughout Canterbury, bigger isn’t always better, but in some scenarios, it definitely helps.

“We run quarries in Dunedin, Christchurch, as well as quarries and large earthworks in Blenheim where we have a lot of our own larger equipment.

But beyond the quarry and earthworks operations, the workload is always changing, so for bigger stuff like articulated dump trucks and the bigger excavators, we will hire that stuff in.

“For our general civil projects, we don’t tend to utilise anything bigger than a 14-tonne excavator, for example. That size of machine is kind of the sweet spot for us.”

Service excellence

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Jeremy Coleman from Porter Hire says that all manner of machines can be sourced via the operation, from the largest forestry excavator to a single plate compactor.

“Our clients rent all sorts of equipment through us. Dump trucks, graders, water carts, elevated work platforms, you name it,” he says.

“Even if we drill down to just excavators, you’ll see a wide range of options. We have large fleets of mini excavators, heavy excavators, and wheeled excavators all available throughout the country. The flexibility for any application we can present makes our offering pretty compelling for clients like Isaac Construction.”

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Porter Hire also offers a variety of digger buckets, attachments, and GPS systems

Porter Hire also offers a variety of digger buckets, attachments, and GPS systems, ensuring any hired machine arrives onsite fit for the task at hand.

Hiring machinery through Porter Hire also remains a dependable exercise throughout the entire time each machine spends on the ground, up to and including regular servicing.

“Just because the machine is hired doesn’t mean we don’t give it the same attention that
we would a customer’s own equipment,” says Jeremy. “We run to the same sort of service scheduling anyone would get if they had bought the machine new.

There’s no difference there. We work with our hire customers to programme in the service ahead of time and make sure our technical support staff are onsite when arranged to get the service done and have that machine back up and working.”

“Crucially for us, with projects on all over the South Island, they have us covered when we need extra equipment,” Terry concludes. “It’s a relationship that has lasted a long time for a good reason.”

Find new and used heavy machinery for sale in NZ

Photography: Cameron Officer

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