Over the Christmas break, Tony McKee will be taking his family to the famous Sepilok Orang Utan sanctuary near Sandakan in northeast Borneo. About 80 orangutans roam free in the reserve.
Last year the McKees visited the ancient temples in Cambodia, and next Christmas they could be relaxing on the white sands of Mount Maunganui beach.
Tony and his wife, Nikki, and 3-year-old son, Eli, are making the most of Southeast Asia before returning home in "a year or two".
A qualified structural engineer, Tony was brought up in Tauranga and is now director of the five-strong project management division in Beca's Singapore office.
He has just completed one of this year's international construction feats.
Tony, 37, was the project manager for the 200m-high SkyPark that was built on top of the S$6.8 billion ($7 billion) Marina Bay Sands hotel, shopping, casino and cultural complex on Singapore's downtown waterfront.
The SkyPark, now finished on the 57th level of the Marina Bay Sands, has three restaurants and bars, landscaped gardens with more than 500 trees, and a curved 150m-long infinity swimming pool, which takes 1.4 million litres of water and provides breathtaking views of the bustling city.
Stretching 340m in length and covering a total of 12,000sq m, SkyPark is shaped like an extended aluminium ship hull across three hotel towers and two bridges - at the northern end it culminates in the world's largest cantilever (public observation) platform, about 60m long.
"I guess the height is not to everyone's taste," said Tony.
"At first my wife wouldn't go closer than 2m from the edge [of the platform]. You come out of the lifts and you're greeted by a glass barrier.
"It's all designed to make the most of the views, including looking out to sea to Sumatra, and over time people get closer to the edge. It's the same for the swimming pool.
"Some guests hang 8m back from the infinity edge but beyond that is a walkway, for service and maintenance, and another barrier. The flow of water is not great and there's no chance of getting sucked over the edge," he said.
Tony was one of seven Beca project managers engaged on the spectacular Marina Bay Sands project that includes 2560 hotel rooms, 300 shops, two theatres and a museum shaped like a lotus flower.
He started work there in 2007 as design manager for the convention centre, which covers six floors and accommodates 45,000 delegates across 2000 exhibition booths and 250 meeting rooms. The grand ballroom seats 11,000 people.
Tony was then asked to manage the SkyPark development. "It took 18 months of planning and we had one year to build it. The sheer volume of the structure provided some unique challenges."
His first challenge was to lift 4500 tonnes of steel to provide the foundation for the SkyPark, including the link bridges between the towers.
The steel segments, 350 tonnes each, were prefabricated and assembled on the ground to make sure they fit.
They were then taken apart and lifted to the top by large winches - the process involved 13 heavy lifts over 12 weeks at the end of last year, representing the highest strand-jacking operation ever undertaken on a building anywhere in the world.
At the peak of the lifting there were 330 skilled tradesmen on-site, including 30 Japanese engineers.
The next challenge was constructing the 1.5m-deep, infinity pool which looks 150m long but is in fact split into three enclosures. Between them are two movement joints secured and sealed by U-shaped terrace connections that sit below the water and maintain the continuous pool effect.
Any vertical movement - the pool is built on two bridges and three towers - was resolved by supporting it with 500 adjustable jacks.
Then on to the gardens, which required 2200 cubic metres of soil, 2500sq m of stone and 1.5km of balustrades.
To withstand high winds, the root balls of the trees - more than 4m in height - were encased in stainless steel mesh nets and tied to pre-cast concrete blocks. During the busiest times, there were more than 700 people working for 12 contractors on SkyPark.
Tony said in the end the project came down to "co-ordination and communication with the different players.
"They came from Hong Kong, Britain, Dubai, Germany and Australia, and it was a nice opportunity to benchmark yourself against people from around the world."
Tony had lived in Tauranga from the age of 7 after his parents - who now run the Benjamin Moore Paints shop at the Mount - decided to leave Papua New Guinea.
Tony attended Mount Maunganui Intermediate School and Mount Maunganui College before moving to Hamilton for an intermediate year at the University of Waikato's School of Engineering.
He completed his engineering degree in Auckland and joined Beca in 1995. He soon developed a penchant for big projects.
After four years in the Auckland office, he became the resident engineer for the construction of the 340m-high Macau Tower, only slightly taller than the Sky Tower in the city he had just left.
He then worked for two years in London, with consulting engineers Buro Happold and Price and Myers, helping to re-develop the Imperial College and BBC headquarters at White City.
He also worked on a retail project on Canary Wharf.
Back in Auckland in 2003, Tony was involved in the master plan for the Auckland International Airport terminal extensions, and he figured out a way to build new food and beverage facilities while keeping the Auckland Showgrounds at Greenlane operating.
He was a project manager in the initial planning stages for the Eden Park re-development - he provided advice on minimising the impact of building in a sensitive residential area during the resource consent process.
The planning slowed and he took the opportunity in Singapore.
"I had an ex-colleague email me about this great project and we were on our way to a wedding in London.
"We stopped off in Singapore on the way back, and over a few wines I made a few tough calls," Tony said.
The McKees have now been in Singapore nearly four years. Nikki, a post-doctoral fellow, is a senior researcher at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School's centre for tropical diseases.
Tony wants to grow Beca's project management work out of the Singapore office.
"We can leverage off the Sands project and we are starting to get some traction. Everything happens at great pace here and the projects are massive.
"Singapore is spending $30 billion in the construction industry - six times more than New Zealand. It's surprising; there's more undeveloped space than you think. The Government has controlled the release of land.
"You have clusters of buildings 12 storeys and above, and then lots of trees and green spaces. You don't feel you are living in a built-up environment."
Beca has designed a student accommodation building with 4700 rooms and three teaching facilities at the National University of Singapore Residential College - and it is involved with the final stages of the S$6.5 billion Sentosa Resorts World, which includes a Universal Studios Theme Park.
The last development phase, costing S$1 billion, involves two hotels and an oceanarium similar to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World in Auckland.
Singapore planned two major integrated resorts - the Marina Bay Sands and Sentosa - to attract more conference delegates and tourists.
"They wanted to offer visitors more things to do and encourage them to stay longer," said Tony. "Next year Singapore is predicting 15 per cent [economic] growth off the back of the two resorts that have just opened."
Tony will soak up the Singapore spirit for another year or two before heading back to New Zealand.
"The opportunities with Beca have been fantastic and you never quite know where your career is heading.
"But I'm not looking for a multi-billion dollar project in a hurry. I lost a lot of hair working on the Sands."
From Tauranga to top of the world
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