Mainzeal staff working for a joint venture managing Canterbury earthquake repairs got good news today - most have been offered jobs by the other half of the entity.

Global engineering and consultancy firm MWH said it would employ 86 Mainzeal staff in Christchurch that had been seconded to the joint venture.

Mainzeal was placed in receivership on Waitangi Day after being unable to front with a $1.8m payment to a lender.

Only a few Mainzeal staff were not offered jobs today, although MWH declined to reveal how many.

MWH was also buying the other half of the MWH Mainzeal venture from the receivers, and changing the name to MWH Recovery.

MWH Recovery Programme manager Chris Pile would not disclose how much they paid for the 50 per cent share of the venture but did say it was a "seven figure sum", meaning it was under $10 million.

The entity has about 200 staff in all.

Pile said the repair and rebuild of dwellings of residential customers of Vero, AA Insurance and SIS Insurance had hardly been affected by Mainzeal's receivership because Mainzeal was not doing the residential repair work itself.

However, Mainzeal did have a handful of construction contracts for earthquake repairs and rebuilds for commercial properties.

MWH had been figuring how to get those converted into new contracts.

Less than five were in construction at time of receivership, a number had been completed and some were in the scope to consenting stage and could be easily assigned to another contractor.

"Overall the impact of the receivership on our insurance clients has been very, very insignificant," Pile said.

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