NZSki is progressing a major upgrade and expansion of The Remarkables Ski Area near Queenstown. The programme responds to increasing peak-season demand and will establish a multi-valley ski area extending from the existing Rastus Burn facilities into the higher-elevation Doolans Basin, increasing overall capacity progressively from approximately 3,500 to 6,000 visitors per day while improving the ski area's resilience to increasingly variable weather.

The programme includes a new gondola connecting the existing base area with a mid-station on Helicopter Ridge and anew terminal in Doolans Basin, along with expansion of the Rastus Burn Base Building, a new multi-purpose Doolans Cabin Building, access roads and ski trails, learner facilities, snowmaking, transport improvements, and substantial upgrades to power, water, wastewater, stormwater and telecommunications infrastructure. Delivery is planned progressively across multiple alpine construction seasons while the existing ski area remains operational.

Auxilium was engaged to provide embedded programme and design management during development of the substantive Fast-track application, establishing the programme structure, coordinating workstreams, managing dependencies and risks, and maintaining visibility across approvals, design, procurement and delivery planning. Design management coordinated the engineering, environmental, planning, architectural, ropeway and operational disciplines, integrating their outputs into a coordinated and defensible application package.

The design process had to respond to steep and remote alpine terrain, short construction seasons, geotechnical and natural-hazard constraints, sensitive ecological environments, extreme weather and the need to maintain ongoing ski operations. Auxilium facilitated interdisciplinary optioneering, design reviews and decision-making to resolve critical interfaces between the gondola, buildings, access routes, earthworks, utilities and construction methodology, applying an effects-led design approach that prioritised avoidance and minimisation of environmental effects, consolidation of infrastructure within shared corridors, and flexibility for further refinement during detailed design.

The resulting work brought the programme and technical disciplines together around a coordinated concept design, staged construction strategy and clear design rationale — giving NZSki a structured basis for the Fast-track application and for subsequent design development, procurement and delivery planning.

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