History
HISTORY
In May 2011, McConnell Group purchased the business and assets (including the brand, company name and other intellectual property) of Harker Underground Construction.
The Harker brand, synonymous with specialist microtunnelling, has been re-established as a McConnell Group business. The purchase was made through a wholly-owned subsidiary of McConnell Group which, on completion of the purchase, changed its name to Harker Underground Construction Limited.
McConnell Group is committed to supporting and enhancing the business.
PAST HISTORY
The Harker brand was firmly established in 1988 when Graeme Harker founded Harker Underground Construction, a specialist contractor providing microtunnelling and pipejacking construction services. The business still used ‘tried and true’ traditional methods but began introducing their own tunneling plant and equipment as seen and used overseas.
The cost of buying, even hiring, tunnel boring machines (TBM) from overseas manufacturers and suppliers was not a viable option for a relatively small company, let alone when competing for work in the open market against the traditional open cut pipe installation method. The only other feasible option was to ‘produce your own’ tunnel boring plant and equipment which is exactly what Graeme did.
Harker Underground Construction ventured into the design and manufacture of TBMs and systems (e.g. slurry separation plants, software and machine guidance systems) in New Zealand. Graeme’s vision of providing tunnel boring plant and equipment - on par and equivalent to equipment available on the international market – using ‘kiwi’ ingenuity had been realised.
Since 1988, Harker Underground Construction has installed, using their own TBMs and systems, kilometres of pipe ranging from 450mm to 3000mm in diameter, at depths varying from 1.5 to 24 metres below ground level under CBD areas, motorways, main arterial roads, existing buildings / dwellings, railway lines and Greenfield sites.
