Ryman Lynfield Times Winter edition 2018
Next stop Tropicana! Brian and Lyn are excited about moving in - while keeping Brian’s project alive
Keeping it local
Meet Lafi Lemana
Construction update
Greetings from Lynfield... Hello and welcome to our latest Ryman Lynfield Times. Winter is here and for us it has been such a busy year. With our overseas holidays all but a memory, the pace around here has certainly picked up! Our first apartment block has all the concrete poured for the top floor and the team will soon start to frame, line and paint it. The excitement is certainly building with interior designers, Frobisher, liaising with residents to choose their carpets and curtains. Future residents are also preparing their homes to go on the market in order to move in to their brand-new homes in late November. We have enjoyed some wonderful events so far this year, including an extremely popular brief history about Beacon (the local Blockhouse Bay paper) given by Kerrie, John (son of Bill) Subritzky. Bill previously owned the property where we are now.
Angela Barraclough Sales Advisor Ph: 09 627 2727 or 0800 555 116
We have some interesting events coming up, the Hearing Association will give a presentation on the causes of hearing loss and solutions to general hearing issues. ‘Where is your password’ is also coming up in June, which is a great talk on how to keep all of your passwords and important documents in the one place. We are also having a mid-winter celebration for our residents, this is a great opportunity for us all to get to know each other. The excitement for the new apartments to be finished is building and we are looking forward to welcoming our new residents later on in the year. Kind regards,
Angela Barraclough
Frances Quirk
Frances Quirk Sales Advisor Ph: 09 627 2727 or 0800 555 118
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Keeping it local Sales advisors Frances Quirk and Angela Barraclough are extremely active in the Lynfield community and its surrounding suburbs. They are always looking for ways to support local clubs, groups and venues. The pair have teamed up with Age Concern to arrange several presentations in collaboration. “We’re doing a lot with Age Concern and that’s proved to be a really successful partnership”, says Angela. “Some of the topics we are covering include Staying Safe on the Road, Steady Steps and Nutrition in a Nutshell.” Ryman also holds information presentations explaining the history and background of the company and the various features that are on offer at the new village, with these often held at local venues such as the Blockhouse Bay Bowling Club and the Maungakiekie Golf Club. But Angela says they are always happy to come and talk at your group’s meetings if preferred. “One of our future residents put my card forward at their Probus meeting and I’m going to do a presentation about what the company means to me and what Ryman is all about for them soon.” The pair are always keen to support the clubs’ own events
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and have sponsored both indoor and outdoor bowling tournaments at the Blockhouse Bay club and Central Bowling Club in Sandringham. The girls are particularly looking forward to a travel expo coming up on July 26 and Kings Plant Barn coming along to present about Planting on a Patio on 9 August. Then there is the YMCA Gold exercise class for seniors where we have a lovely visit each month accompanied by a delicious morning tea. “Later in the year we’re going to do our Triple A exercises and since everyone will have worked up an appetite we’ll put on some tasty refreshments for this too!” says Angela. Left: Sales advisors Angela Barraclough and Frances Quirk outside the Lynfield sales office
Construction update The layout of the village is really starting to emerge now with brisk progress being made on both the first apartment block and the village centre, reports site manager Ricky Ciobanu. “By the end of May we had the first slab on the hospital level completed with over 50 panels being installed in the village centre. “We’re now in the process of landing ribs and boxing up the slab for pouring the resthome level,” says Ricky. Ricky said there had been a good run of weather which was always good news for construction workers. “We had two weeks of particularly nice weather and having it on our side means we haven’t had a lot of work put off by rain.” An exciting development was getting consent for Stage 3 of construction, which will be another apartment block behind the first block. Ricky said the design work for the retaining walls and piling was undertaken last month (May) ready for work to start either this month (June) or next. Meanwhile, parts of the first independent apartment block have already been fitted out with sprinklers and electrics on the interior as the final levels go on externally.
Ricky said there were ere a couple of new arrivals vals on site which would d make the working experience quicker and more convenient for the 160 or so guys now based there. First was the new 70 metre tower crane. This will speed up the work as it can lift more weight and has a further urther reach than the mobile bile or crawler cranes. Second was the arrival rival of a new on-site café to o feed the construction workers. The prototype model of the Smoko Eatery was launched at Ryman’s Devonport site and has been a huge success, offering freshlymade food including healthy options, barista-made coffee and of course decent pies! Ricky, who has come to Lynfield from Ryman’s Birkenhead site, says he can’t wait! “It means the guys can get more of a break because they don’t have to go off site to buy food, and that means they can be more efficient with their work, and the food is really good too!” Insert: Site manager Ricky Gobanu is looking forward to Stage 3 of construction Right: Our first apartment block making good headway
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It’s got to be
good enough for mum In May 2018 Kevin Hickman announced he was standing down from the board of Ryman, ending 34 years of service at the company. There is no doubt that Ryman Healthcare would not be the company it is today without Kevin, and everyone at Ryman wishes him all the best with his retirement. The Ryman story began back in 1983, when Kevin was a former policeman turned private detective. He was asked to investigate a resthome fire in Christchurch, and he did not like what he saw. “The fire was in an old villa and there were four people to a room all with shared toilets,’’ Kevin recalls. “To me it was crazy, the standards were so poor. But that’s how resthomes were in those days.’’ Kevin would never dream of putting his mother into a place like that if she needed to go into care. “I thought, what would I want for mum?” And so, Ryman’s philosophy that care has to be “good enough for mum” was born. Kevin teamed up with John Ryder, an accountant, and together they made a dynamic pair. Ryman – a combination of Ryder and Hickman – Healthcare was registered and they bought their first property to convert into a resthome in 1984.
“I thought, what would I want for mum?” As well as providing care that was better than anywhere else, the company had to be sustainable, with its systems constantly refined and improved upon. The size of the villages and the facilities offered may have changed over the past 30 years, but Ryman’s core philosophy remains the same. Care is still at the heart of what we do. And it’s got to be good enough for mum. Or dad!
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Next stop Tropicana For Brian Currie, building his own model railroad in the basement has been a 15-year labour of love. And while Brian’s wife Lyn supports her husband’s band’s all-consuming passion 100 per cent, she knew ew it meant a lifelong tie to their house of 26 years rs on Commodore Drive, Lynfield. Well, that was until Ryman Healthcare announced unced it would be building a new retirement village e on the Tropicana estate. “We never thought we’d leave this house because ecause of the trains, and also we run our accounting g business from home, so it was just good timing,” says Lyn. The funny thing is it was Lyn’s sister and brotherin-law who were actively looking in the first place. “They came to look and we ended up buying!” she laughs. Now, their plan is to rent out the top part of their house while below deck Brian can continue to pop over the road to tweak his ongoing rail project, a sight which is truly something to behold. There are 44 metres of 9 millimetre track weaving in and out of five tunnels – or holes – in the basement walls, with a variety of industrial and rural sceneries and settings as backdrops. The attention to detail is incredible, with a computerised signal system to control the switches and sound effects and five buildings named after their grandchildren. It takes nearly five minutes for a train to follow the whole track around. While he obviously loves trains, he admits they can get frustrating - if a little dust gets on the track it can cause a huge pile-up. “There’s a real buzz in throwing the electrics into it because if that fails everything stops. But the scenery gives me the most pleasure, although being colour-blind created a challenge or two!”
And Lyn has nothing but admiration for Brian’s hobby. “He’s done it all himself, it’s amazing really” She did have to draw the line when Brian wanted to expand out into the middle of the laundry area however. “I wouldn’t have been able to get through carrying a laundry basket!” she says. Instead, Lyn suggested an alternative route involving a new hole in the wall with the compromise solution involving a visit to the jewellers. With four children between them, the nearest being in Muriwai, Brian and Lyn say their move to Ryman has been welcomed by their family. “This way they don’t have to worry about us,” says Lyn. “And we wouldn’t want to put upon them anyway.” After her daughter and son-in-law had a near-miss motorbike accident last year, and with Brian losing a son 10 years ago, the couple are fully focused on living in the present and making the most of life. “Instead of waiting until one of us falls down the stairs and you’re desperate and can’t find a place we decided to act now,” says Lyn. “You just don’t know what’s around the corner so we like to really live each day.”
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Staff Profile
Introducing Lafi
I guess I’m a lead by example kind of a guy, so if we’re pushed for time I like to muck in there and help out. After 14 years with Ryman, foreman Lafi Lemana is one of the most experienced members of the company’s construction team. He started out as an apprentice working on the Edmund Hillary village and went on to help build Bruce McLaren, Possum Bourne, and since February this year, he’s been setting a brisk pace at Lynfield. Asked what the secret to his success is, Lafi laughs: “No secrets!” “I guess I’m a lead by example kind of a guy, so if we’re pushed for time I like to muck in there and help out.” Lafi says the beauty of working at Ryman is being able to quickly find solutions to the problems, either by contacting the company’s in-house architectural team or the staff at structural engineers Mitchell Vranjes.
Father-of-five Lafi appreciates the security and peace that a Ryman village can offer and says his motivation is always to make a beautiful home for future residents. “At Pukekohe there was a gentleman who used to come and visit me every Saturday. The first time he saw his apartment he was speechless. Seeing the expression on his face was priceless.” As he is overseeing the first independent apartment block to be opened, Lafi’s goal is set a high standard which will dictate the quality of the rest of the village. “If I can hand over something real mint and everyone’s happy it’s going to set the bar around here.”
“They’re all within reach so any problems we can get an answer straightaway.” Relationship-building also applies to his own team and Lafi says he’s glad to have kept a core bunch of guys who he can really depend on. Part of that could be the fact that he enjoys teaching his men.
9 Commodore Drive, Lynfield
09 627 2727 www.rymanhealthcare.co.nz