Case Study: a border exception for Marais Laying NZ

Challenge

Marais Laying New Zealand specialises in trenching and industrial cable laying, from large scale renewable projects and oil and gas pipelines, to telecommunications and power infrastructure.

Marais Laying New Zealand was awarded a wind farm cable installation?in November 2021 (Meridian Energy’s Harapaki wind farm) and required an engineer to be mobilised on site for the commissioning of the very specialised equipment (2 new machines: the Tesmec 975 EVO surface miner and the RC320 Tesmec reel career).

Solution

Step 1: Advisably recommended the Harapaki wind farm project be added to the list of Approved Major Infrastructure projects maintained by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission.

Step 2: a detailed application for a Border Exception was prepared and lodged for the specialised commissioning engineer based on his unique experience and technical or specialist skills.

Step 3: a request for a Managed Isolation & Quarantine (MIQ) spot was lodged using the Group allocation requests for construction managed by the Construction Sector Accord.

Result

The Marais Laying engineer was granted a Critical Purpose Visitor Visa allowing him to work on arrival and a MIQ spot.

The equipment was commissioned in time to meet the project requirements!