Restoring a legacy: Revizto’s Role in the Christ Church Cathedral restoration

The Christ Church Cathedral, damaged in the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, is one of New Zealand’s most complex restoration projects. Naylor Love, the main contractor, used technology like Revizto to manage the challenges of restoring the iconic heritage building. Senior Project Manager, Daryl Strawbridge, and Group Digital Manager, Sean Wang, explain how the tool has improved their workflow.

Unique Challenges of Restoring a Heritage Site

Coordinating the design with the existing structure’s geometry posed a challenge for Naylor Love. “The consultant’s design and drawing documentation, along with models, were created based on limited as-built information,” Strawbridge says. “The grid line set out details were not defined, and dimensions were not provided.”

To address these challenges, Revizto, a real-time collaboration platform for the AECO industry, acted as a virtual construction site to help identify and resolve issues early, reducing disruptions on-site.

Revizto’s issue tracker was a very good tool to display complex geometry, coordination, and clashes where all parties could be brought up to speed immediately within the 3D space.

Daryl Strawbridge

Senior Project Manager

Naylor Love

Pre-saved viewpoints, appearance templates, and issue-tracking features allowed the team to easily visualise project workflows. The ability to manipulate models and use measurement tools in Revizto helped confirm critical dimensions, especially when the as-built data was incomplete.

Digital Tools in Action

Collaboration was key to the project’s success. “Due to the complex nature, Revizto has been an extremely useful tool for people at all levels of the project to understand the project through visualisation,” Strawbridge says.

An unexpected highlight came when a traditional stonemason used Revizto in an innovative way. “Stone masonry is an artisan trade, and many are not very technologically literate,” Strawbridge shared. “I saw the mason with his mobile phone out and the Revizto app open. He was pointing his phone at a wall, viewing the point cloud to see what the stone used to look like.” This hands-on approach shows how Revizto can be intuitive even for those with limited digital experience.

Looking Ahead

Despite the project being paused due to funding issues, community feedback has been positive, with many eagerly awaiting the Cathedral’s completion.

Looking forward, Revizto will remain essential for large-scale restoration projects.

To deal with projects of similar value, Revizto is the most suitable software aligning with Naylor Love’s digital approach.

Sean Wang

Group Digital Manager

Naylor Love

For more information about Naylor Love, please visit their website or follow them on LinkedIn.