There have been significant developments in the year since the MWH Mainzeal JV was announced as Vero Insurance’s preferred management services partner for building reinstatement in Canterbury.

The Joint Venture is assisting with reinstatement of earthquake damaged properties for customers of Vero Insurance, AA Insurance, SIS Insurance and AMP. The work covers the residential market for claims greater than $100,000, residential EQC excluded property damage and commercial building claims.

The MWH Mainzeal team now has more than 120 staff based from MWH’s Christchurch office dealing with residential and commercial claims. Currently the team has made safe or livable thousands of homes and is focused on completing assessments of all dwellings and commercial properties. As well, the team assessed or reassessed properties in the first declared worst affected suburbs. This provided information required to enable owners to compare the government and insurer options available to them.

The sequence of aftershocks has created an unprecedented and complex situation. In some cases, properties have been damaged several times, requiring apportionment of damage against each earthquake. MWH Mainzeal has geared up to ensure we collect the right information to enable this to happen. A dedicated call centre has been created to answer customer enquiries, and an online portal has been established to provide domestic claimants with moderate to severely damaged properties with secure access to their personal information regarding the progress of their claim, once it reaches reinstatement stage.

A challenge facing Canterbury is that even when assessments are completed, repairs and rebuilding will still not be able to start in many areas while future earthquake risk remains elevated. However, each passing day without damaging aftershocks, together with more geotechnical and engineering information becoming available, moves us closer to ramping up the reinstatement process.

MWH Mainzeal has the resources ready to undertake the reinstatement of claimants’ properties and look forward to 2012 as a year in which to make a significant contribution to rebuilding Canterbury.