On Thursday 29 June more than 950 hand-picked students from schools throughout the country and their careers advisors and teachers attended the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation’s Big Construction Tour, which returned for its third year. Students spent the day visiting some of the country’s biggest construction sites and developments and being introduced to the wide variety of opportunities available in the building and construction industry. In midst of a nationwide construction skills shortage, this was an excellent way for students to learn the value of a career in the building and construction industry. It also provided a chance…

Simon Dyne General Manager Regional Business North Island, says that emphasis on new technologies is important for developing our future roads, which will need to meet the needs of diverse road users following a number of major incidents involving trucks and cyclists on New Zealand roads over the past two years. “As a company, we want to prevent unnecessary deaths or injuries on our roads. We want our people, and every road user they interact with, to return home safely every day,” Mr Dyne says. Fulton Hogan has also joined forces with Dutch company, Heijmans, who have developed a product…

This year's top carpentry apprentice slogged through four years of university before he realised he was never going to get the job he wanted, where he wanted it writes Alexia Russell in Newsroom today. Chris McLean took up the tools instead and couldn't be happier about his future in construction. Now he is trying to get school leavers to take a step back before applying for their student loan, asking them to spend 10 minutes on the Government's job website researching their future. | Read the full story on Newsroom   ||  May 31, 2017   |||

On April 24, New Zealand and Vietnam have launched a New Zealand-funded 3.8m USD initiative to reduce dam related flooding in Vietnam. New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Murray McCully joined Mr Ha Cong Tuan, Vietnam’s Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, in Hanoi, April 24 to launch the five-year project, which focus on dam safety for the 1000km long Ca River in Vietnam. At the launching ceremony, Mr McCully said: “New Zealand is sharing its expertise in water engineering and natural hazard management to help Vietnam address its development challenges”.“Our support will help Vietnam effectively assess dams most in need…

New Zealand’s construction and building sector needs more recruits. The Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation (BCITO) is launching a major campaign next week to attract new apprentices and demonstrate the possibilities of a career in the trades. Kicking off on 10 April in Auckland, the Not Your Average Tradie Road Trip will see a group of talented BCITO apprentices spending four weeks visiting different regions, helping out community organisations, charities, and schools with building woes. “This is a fantastic opportunity to show people what a career in the trades offers, while also supporting our local communities,” says BCITO Chief…

Pioneer Construction, formerly known as Canterbury Rebuilders, have been awarded a two-year exclusive contract to build portable cabins for Just Cabins in the South Island. Following a thorough selection process, Fenton Peterken, owner andFranchisor of Just Cabins, said that Pioneer Construction was thecompany that most closely matched the requirements of Just Cabinsin terms of experience and outlook. “Although we had several high quality applications from the Christchurch area, Pioneer Construction demonstrated their passion and experience from the outset. We work with a number of partners across the country and we are especially pleased to start this new partnership – two…

An EBSS report ‘Don’t mention the law’, on MBIE’s proposed regulations and methodology for identifying earthquake prone buildings, shows that the Chief Executive, David Smol, intends to flout a landmark Supreme Court decision. The law provides that the earthquake prone building test is against performance in a defined moderate earthquake. The Supreme Court, in a 2014 decision, ruled that the test earthquake must be a moderate earthquake, and not any more severe event. This ruling has been ignored in the methodology, where the effective test is some undefined severe earthquake. “This ‘severe earthquake’ test and other manipulations means that buildings…

Building consent data released today by Statistics New Zealand shows building consents are at their highest level since 2004. However, the industry needs to readdress the way it looks at skills training if it is to meet future demand. To the year ending December 2016, 29,970 new homes gained building consents. This is the highest number since 2004 but still well below the high of 1973 when about 40,000 new homes were consented. Almost all regions showed good growth particularly Manawatu/Whanganui (49%), Northland (43%), Hawke’s Bay (32%), Nelson (34%) and Otago (29%). Auckland fell just short of the 10,000 mark…

New contractors are out and about in the Capital City’s southern and eastern suburbs to keep streets and other public areas in great shape. Wellington City Council has re-tendered and awarded the ‘road corridor’ maintenance contract for the south and east of the city to Fulton Hogan Ltd until June 2020. Fulton Hogan and its key subcontractor, EcoMaintenance, will carry out work including resealing roads and footpaths, replacing sections of kerb and channel, trimming and spraying roadside vegetation, emptying roadside sumps, sweeping streets, removing graffiti and collecting litter. The city’s other road maintenance contractor, Downer, covers the central city and…

Kiwi ingenuity has seen a New Zealand owned cement company take lessons from ancient Roman concrete to create and launch a ground-breaking low-carbon footprint cement that helps reduce global CO2 emissions. “HR CEMENT, based in Mt Maunganui, has managed to differentiate a basic commodity and develop a more environmentally friendly cement called ECO-CEM that has significant benefits when compared to standard cements,” said Chris Hall, Managing Director of HR Cement. “ECO-CEM has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete utilised on construction sites by 15-30% and set a New Zealand benchmark for low-carbon concretes in New Zealand,” said…

Transport Minister Simon Bridges has announced the establishment of a new alliance to repair State Highway 1 and the rail line north and south of Kaikoura. The alliance, known as the North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery (NCTIR), is being led by Duncan Gibb, formerly of the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT). The alliance is made up of the NZ Transport Agency, KiwiRail, Fulton Hogan, Downer, Higgins and HEB Construction. “The alliance will be the lead delivery agency to repair the transport infrastructure damaged during the earthquake. These organisations have been heavily involved in the emergency response to date and…