Author Archives: Damon Harvey

About Damon Harvey

Damon is the editor and publisher of The Profit. Damon has over 20 years experience as a journalist, content developer, marketer and public relations specialist. Damon is a huge advocate for Hawke's Bay businesses and The Profit was created as a platform to celebrate HB businesses and business people. Damon is also a director of Attn! marketing pr - www.attn.co.nz alongside wife Anna Lorck. He is also a Hastings District Councillor and chairman of Sport Hawke's Bay. In his spare time he loves surfing, mountain biking, crossfit and spending time with his family, which includes five girls! If you've got a great story contact Damon on 021 2886 772 or damon@theprofit.co.nz

The war for talent – Hawke’s Bay’s Talent Attraction Strategy

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Hawke’s Bay is buzzing. Our local economy is one of the best performing in regional New Zealand. Consumer confidence is high, unemployment is at a 10 year low. The labour market is tight and that means that competition for workers (not only in Hawke’s Bay, but around New Zealand) is expected to remain strong.

Our businesses are doing well, but what they need to sustain that growth is more people with the right skill-sets and experience, along with work-ready employees. It’s a significant challenge to business growth and one that if not addressed, has the potential to curb our economy’s upward trajectory.

One of the ways that we can address our talent shortage is to develop the local workforce; it’s a key focus for business and iwi leaders, central and local government. The other is to attract people with the skills we need.

That puts Hawke’s Bay in direct competition with other regions of New Zealand, all who have the same aspirations for their region; to drive growth. Simply put: talent drives business and skills drive talent.

Currently only 2 percent of all skilled international migrants coming into New Zealand, find work in Hawke’s Bay. If we want to grow this skill-base opportunity, we need to do something different. We know there are widespread challenges in attracting candidates for niche, specialist, managerial, and technical roles. Employers and regional leaders need to think innovatively about talent attraction and retention. There’s a clear need for a strategy and a joined-up approach that sees Hawke’s Bay go to battle in the war for talent.

That’s where Hawke’s Bay’s Talent Attraction Strategy comes in. Think Hawke’s Bay (a collective made up of Business Hawke’s Bay, local councils, Hawke’s Bay Tourism, Napier Port and Hawke’s Bay Airport) is developing a competitive strategy to attract skilled talent. This is a new initiative for the region and a key deliverable of Matariki, Hawke’s Bay’s Regional Development Strategy for Economic and Inclusive

Growth. Specifically, the strategy addresses Pillar 5: “Promoting our place: attracting visitors, talent, businesses and investment to strengthen and diversify our economy.”

Craig Ireson, Economic Development Lead for Central Hawke’s Bay District Council says the goal is to develop a strategy to inform our skills attraction campaigns, by looking at the skills gaps and then identifying who needs to be attracted and what the key attraction drivers are for them.

Carolyn Neville continues: To be clear, the strategy is not focused on Regional Seasonal Employer skills; that’s already being done well, and the strategy also doesn’t cover every industry. Instead, the focus is on technical, leadership and transferrable skills, and industries that will deliver the greatest impact. The strategy which is close to being finalised, has identified initial sectors to focus on, based on growth and skills needs.

The type of skills profiles that we’re targeting encompasses those with higher level formal education and training, work experience and on-the-job-training, particularly covering managerial, leadership and professional roles, support workers, technicians and trade workers.

Most importantly, the strategy identifies the opportunity for Hawke’s Bay to do something different. Almost every region has mid-career candidates with families as a key focus of their attraction campaigns. This is a highly competitive segment. Other age groups and household types such as late career or couple households are largely untapped and could offer additional value to Hawke’s Bay.

Effective talent attraction requires more than a marketing campaign. Other important considerations include wrap around support to help people settle in once they’ve moved, to integrate into the community, both socially and professionally. Our strategy adopts a talent management framework that recognises talent attraction and retention requires a holistic eco-system to be truly successful.

Adopting such an approach takes time to implement comprehensively, so priorities for action in the short and medium term need to be identified. Getting these essential foundations in place means that we have a greater chance of keeping talent in our region. Very few regions provide active settlement support, with Auckland leading the way with its talent attraction activities.

In profiling Hawke’s Bay, we need to consider people’s aspirations and motivations for relocating and ensure that our campaigns strike the right note to get them here. Once they’re here, we need to reinforce our attraction messaging with onboarding and retention programmes to help them settle in well, put roots down and network, so our hard work and their faith in Hawke’s Bay is rewarded with a long term or permanent relocation.

In summary our talent attraction strategy is a mix of targeted activity to attract skilled talent alongside the staged development of key talent management tools, built around three pillars:

1. Targeting the right skilled talent – focusing on transferrable skills, management and professional skills along with sector specific technical and trade skills

2. Targeting the right people:

  • –  mid stage career with technical and trade skills, business professionals (single, couple or family)
  • –  late stage career with transferable higher skill-sets (single or couple)3. Developing the tools required – including marketing, transitional, management and reputation tools to help people/families settle in and thrive, professionally and personally

Of course, underpinning all this targeting is our existing narrative around lifestyle and ease of living; but people also need to know that Hawke’s Bay offers lifestyle plus a great range of career and business opportunities, community involvement, networks and new challenges. And the chance to stay connected to existing networks. It’s not all about the wine!

Attracting entrepreneurial, technical and professionally skilled people is critical to driving growth and making our region more innovative and sustainable. Hawke’s Bay’s Talent Attraction Strategy is the way that our region will compete more effectively both nationally and internationally, in the war for talent. Great things grow here!

Fingermark & Luke Irving – Making a mark on the global fast food scene

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Luke Irving has big aspirations to leave an indelible mark on the global technology scene from Havelock North, as well as creating a Silicon Valley styled technology scene nurturing Hawke’s Bay talent.

Luke, the founder of a global tech company Fingermark which is leading the development of applied computer vision and deep learning computer machine technology, uplifted his team of 18 staff from Auckland and moved them into a warehouse in Havelock North three years ago.

The easiest way to explain what Fingermark does is that it designs, builds and manufactures leading edge technology solutions to help businesses streamline operations and enhance customer experience.

Fingermark leads the way in artificial intelligence (AI) software with real time and predictive business analytics, through to next generation customer kiosks and digital menu boards, which is fit for purpose and with a clear vision to “revolutionise customer speed of service” in sectors such as Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) and the health sector.

Luke established Fingermark in 2005, seeing a gap in the touch screen market and how it could be adopted in the hospitality and food service industry. He had had dabbled in the technology as a bar owner in Wellington, when he installed a touch screen point of sale system which he simply turned the screen around to the customer to place their food order.

“Self-service was starting to come of age and technology was at price point that it could be adopted into most markets quite easily but there was no one building technology in that space in NZ.

“I took a bit of a punt and set Fingermark up as a digital kiosk company, where we started to build hardware and software.

Early adopters included the Briscoes Group including Rebel Sport as well as Westfield Group and Sky City.”

Luke’s big break came when he developed the first self-ordering and payment kiosk for Subway, heralding a serious foray into the QSR sector.

This opened up the global opportunity to secure a contract with Yum Brands, the parent company of Restaurant Brands, which operates Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC globally.

Luke says fast food businesses were making good money during the Global Financial Crisis and they decided to invest in digital technology such as outdoor and indoor ordering kiosks and digital signage.

“There’s a well-known story of me taking 63 flights across the Tasman to win the Yum brands contract.

“They saw us as one-stop technology shop and that started our growth and global opportunities, so at the point in time I reinvested heavily back into the business in software development and we set up a software development business in Brazil.”

Four years ago, Fingermark hit a “sweet spot” and started to win additional contracts in the QSR sector for developing AI and Machine learning for suggestive selling and predictive modelling of a customer’s ordering patterns. The next generation technology is capable of identifying the customer and its buying habits so that it can offer more than ‘would you like fries with that?’.

Fingermark has gone on to smash its “big hairy audacious” client base target set for end of 2020 goal of 100,000 QSR including securing a global contact with McDonalds.

Fingermark now employs over 60 staff, many spread across two offices spaces in Havelock North, as well as team members based in Brazil, Dubai and Colarado, United States.

Luke’s ambitions are not to just develop a large technology business in Hawke’s Bay but to develop local talent that goes on to work in other local technology businesses such as Re-leased, Ask Your Team or Fingermark’s sister business Florence, which is based in Napier.

To do so, he is championing a talent laboratory campus and is scouting for a greenfields site. He has also had early discussions with EIT Hawke’s Bay to be the education partner with the aim of delivering highly skilled technology graduates with a higher earning capacity to Hawke’s Bay businesses.

“We’ve got five EIT technology graduates at Fingermark and we can see the potential to create a lab style education hub that will ensure the long term sustainability of businesses like ours in Hawke’s Bay. We don’t want to move, but we need the talent and there’s two options — you grow it locally or you import it.

Mark Matthews – Making his Mark on the animal health scene

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Mark Matthews retired as a veterinarian earlier this year after 44 years of travelling on dirt roads to the back blocks of Hawke’s Bay and other parts of the Central North Island.

Mark grew up on a farm in Poverty Bay but rather than becoming a farmer, he set his sights on being a vet – and a pretty good one, too.

Mark studied at Massey University in the early 1970s and upon graduating he moved over the hill to a vet clinic in Pahiatua, where he came under the mentorship of Bruce Farquharson. He spent five years learning off Bruce before moving up to Hastings to establish a practice for Vet Services Hawke’s Bay, an ambitious practice that started as the Central Hawke’s Bay Vet Club in 1949.

“Bruce played an important role in my career and was a fantastic mentor, especially in the area of production animal health.”

Mark, his pregnant wife Diane and two young children packed up and moved to a new exciting opportunity to establish Vet Services Hastings in 1980. Over the next 30 years, he would see the small clinic with one vet grow to a large-scale companion and working animal clinic with 14 vets, a large support team and a strong retail presence.

Mark built a strong reputation as a problem- solving vet on many farms across Hawke’s Bay, as well as earning a reputation as a leading authority on production animals that culminated in him being the latest recipient of the Alan Baldry Award this year for his contribution to sheep production.

Over the years he also became much sought after for his expertise in sheep and cattle health and productivity, presenting at many conferences in the United Kingdom and Australia. He was also involved in the early development of artificial insemination for sheep reproduction.

However, his greatest achievements are on the farm, where he’s helped minimise the outbreak of deadly animal diseases along with developing animal health plans for farmers.

“We deal with disease outbreaks all the time and I recall many years ago a farmer had all these yearling cattle dying and it looked like they had been poisoned – there was dead cattle everywhere.

“We did some autopsies and found out it was a major outbreak of worms and it was a set of circumstances that saw many of them die in a short period of time, which at first made us think they had been poisoned.”

Another interesting problem Mark and his team solved presented itself in the early days of dairying. The dairy cattle were dying and the farmer called in a nutritionist and Vet Services.

“They were all anaemic, they had no blood. The nutritionist couldn’t work it out but we gathered the information, pieced it together and worked out what was happening – it was a lack of phosphorus in the feed. We traced it back to the farmer providing supplementary feed that was coming from a food processing plant.”

The biggest farm production change Mark has seen over his career has been the introduction of international sheep genetics, which he says was a “major game changer”.

“All of a sudden you had sheep that produced two or three lambs, where New Zealand sheep at the time were only producing one and, only sometimes, two.

“Genetics has played a big role, as has on- farm practices. There’s been a lot more intensification and farmers have become much more ‘scientific’ than they used to be. They take a much more measured approach and some farmers are just amazing with what they are doing on their farms.

“When I first graduated, farmers would have been lucky to grow 8,000 kilograms of dry matter a year yet now top farmers are growing 15,000 kilograms, which can be attributed to farming techniques and genetics in the feed.”

Mark says the other key change was the end of livestock incentives when farmers were “paid to have sheep and beef”.

“That all went under Rogernomics and for the better as well, as farmers are now farming for a profit, not incentives.”

In recent years the spotlight has been placed on farmers and the environmental impact of farming. Mark says that generally farmers have been unfairly tarnished when it comes to their environmental footprint.

“Most farmers are very environmentally aware of what’s happening and are doing a lot; I don’t think the general public realise just how much they are doing.”

However, he says dairying could still be less intensive.

“It’s only my theory but farmers should only have enough cows that they can feed from what is grown on the farm and I think if you did that, you wouldn’t have any problems at all.

“But what happens is that they might have 30 percent more cows, and that means they have to bring in 30 percent more feed. Then you have all the problems of the extra nitrate coming out of the cows that adds pressure to our soils and waterways.”

Mark says he misses visiting the farms and catching up regularly with his farming clients and he has a word of advice for the modern- day vet:

“Some vets don’t get outside of the cattle yards but you need to get out and drive around the farm so that you understand the problems of the farm. You might work out a plan on how to do something but it might be physically too hard to achieve because of the terrain or lack of facilities on the farm, so it’s really important to get out on the farm and understand the full picture.”

Mark was also instrumental in the growth and success of Vet Services, which now has clinics in Masterton, Dannevirke, Waipukurau, Hastings and Napier.

He became an owner of the Hastings practice and was chairman of the board for about eight years. As he sits back in retirement, the only part of his job he doesn’t miss is being on-call.

Now in retirement, Mark and wife Cath plan to hitch up the caravan a bit more, spend time at the holiday home in Taupo as well as keep fit swimming and mountain biking.

Powering up Arataki

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Thanks to an abundance of Hawke’s Bay sunlight, Arataki will halve its annual power bill through a new solar power installation at its production plant in Havelock North.

Managers Pam and Rhys Flack say the move to solar energy is another important step in Arataki’s commitment towards improving its environmental footprint.

“We’re also making processing changes to favour daytime power usage, rather than at night, to maximise the benefits of the installation. We’re aiming to halve our $50,000 annual power bill with around seven years’ payback on the capital cost,” they say.

Given the seasonal nature of Arataki’s production, it dovetails into the peak solar generation months. During winter, it expects to need a small power top-up but in spring and summer, excess power will be fed into the national grid.

Arataki hopes that its solar power investment will also pave the way for more businesses to follow, from seeing the environmental benefits and energy cost savings.

“We can all play a part in working towards a goal of national carbon neutrality. The more industries and businesses that take advantage of the benefits of solar power, the less demand on national power generation,” they say.

The solar panels have a new bifacial feature to increase the energy produced – they produce power from both (not just one) sides of the panel. The first 88 solar panels are on the north-facing 600 square metre beekeeping and storage facility and a further 169 panels cover the production and packing plant.

The project, undertaken by Hawke’s Bay business Ecoefficient Solutions NZ, took just to install and fully commission in time for the busy spring pollination and honey seasons.

Ecoefficient Solutions managing director Laura Kerr says she’s seen a big change in mindset from business owners compared to three years ago when solar was basically “not even on the radar”.

“Hawke’s Bay and our abundance of sunlight hours makes solar power one of the best ways we can help towards reducing our carbon footprint as a region.

“Arataki is leading by example and the project is a fantastic opportunity to help showcase the benefits and proven cost savings, so we can encourage more and more businesses to invest in solar,” she says.

The investment in solar power at the Havelock North site complements the Arataki Honey Rotorua operation, where all its processing energy has been geothermal since the early 1960s.

Arataki Honey is also investing in more sustainable packaging options and recently introduced a cardboard one-kilogram pot for its most popular Clover Blend Honey.

Arataki is always looking at ways it can contribute to environmental sustainability. “The solar power project and the cardboard pack are two significant steps in our journey,” says Rhys.

Arataki Honey’s Education Centre welcomes over 60,000 international and local visitors to its Havelock North site every year. “As part of raising environmental awareness, the centre will now including a Real Time Power Dashboard to show visitors exactly how the solar panels perform.”

FIngermark – Making a mark on the global fast food scene

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Luke Irving has big aspirations to leave an indelible mark on the global technology scene from Havelock North, as well as creating a Silicon Valley styled technology scene nurturing Hawke’s Bay talent.

Luke, the founder of a global tech company Fingermark which is leading the development of applied computer vision and deep learning computer machine technology, uplifted his

team of 18 staff from Auckland and moved them into a warehouse in Havelock North three years ago.

The easiest way to explain what Fingermark does is that it designs, builds and manufactures leading edge technology solutions to help businesses streamline operations and enhance customer experience.

Fingermark leads the way in artificial intelligence (AI) software with real time and predictive business analytics, through to next generation customer kiosks and digital menu boards, which is fit for purpose and with a clear vision to “revolutionise customer speed of service” in sectors such as Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) and the health sector.

Luke established Fingermark in 2005, seeing a gap in the touch screen market and how it could be adopted in the hospitality and food service industry. He had had dabbled in the technology as a bar owner in Wellington, when he installed a touch screen point of sale system which he simply turned the screen around to the customer to place their food order.

“Self-service was starting to come of age and technology was at price point that it could be adopted into most markets quite easily but there was no one building technology in that space in NZ.

“I took a bit of a punt and set Fingermark up as a digital kiosk company, where we started to build hardware and software.

Early adopters included the Briscoes Group including Rebel Sport as well as Westfield Group and Sky City.”

Luke’s big break came when he developed the first self-ordering and payment kiosk for Subway, heralding a serious foray into the QSR sector.

This opened up the global opportunity to secure a contract with Yum Brands, the parent company of Restaurant Brands, which operates Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC globally.

Luke says fast food businesses were making good money during the Global Financial Crisis and they decided to invest in digital technology such as outdoor and indoor ordering kiosks and digital signage.

“There’s a well-known story of me taking 63 flights across the Tasman to win the Yum brands contract.

“They saw us as one-stop technology shop and that started our growth and global opportunities, so at the point in time I reinvested heavily back into the business in software development and we set up a software development business in Brazil.”

Four years ago, Fingermark hit a “sweet spot” and started to win additional contracts in the QSR sector for developing AI and Machine learning for suggestive selling and predictive modelling of a customer’s ordering patterns. The next generation technology is capable of identifying the customer and its buying habits so that it can offer more than ‘would you like fries with that?’.

Fingermark has gone on to smash its “big hairy audacious” client base target set for end of 2020 goal of 100,000 QSR including securing a global contact with McDonalds.

Fingermark now employs over 60 staff, many spread across two offices spaces in Havelock North, as well as team members based in Brazil, Dubai and Colarado, United States.

Luke’s ambitions are not to just develop a large technology business in Hawke’s Bay but to develop local talent that goes on to work in other local technology businesses such as Re-leased, Ask Your Team or Fingermark’s sister business Florence, which is based in Napier.

To do so, he is championing a talent laboratory campus and is scouting for a greenfields site. He has also had early discussions with EIT Hawke’s Bay to be the education partner with the aim of delivering highly skilled technology graduates with a higher earning capacity to Hawke’s Bay businesses.

“We’ve got five EIT technology graduates at Fingermark and we can see the potential to create a lab style education hub that will ensure the long term sustainability of businesses like ours in Hawke’s Bay. We don’t want to move, but we need the talent and there’s two options — you grow it locally or you import it.

Hastings HIVE has businesses buzzing with excitement over a new co-working space!

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A new-age approach to renting office space that provides corporate-level facilities for small companies has got the business community buzzing in Hawke’s Bay.

From high-end offices, super-fast Internet connectivity, hi-tech meeting and board rooms, a café with great coffee, a chilled water station with still and sparkling water and relaxing lounge area, to luxury bathrooms with showers and changing lockers, small businesses can now enjoy the trappings of a swish corporate office.

Rob and Jenny Gill bought the former Hastings Farmers store in 2018. The large building on the corner of Queen Street and Market Street was completely redeveloped and earthquake strengthened in 2014, becoming the National Operations Centre for Kiwibank.

Part of the building remained undeveloped until the Gills identified an opportunity in Hastings for high-quality, shared workspaces. Rob says the complex, called Hastings HIVE, is based on the shared workplace concept pioneered in international trading centres like London, New York and Toronto.

He says this movement, which they’ve branded ‘i-space’, has been spreading globally, fuelled by a need for adaptable workspaces and a desire for better quality but shared resources, supporting modern agile work practices with intelligent design and the latest information technologies.

Rob illustrates why adaptable spaces are important: “Previously, we owned an IT business that was locked into a 10-year lease, ratcheting up 3 percent a year. This at a time when rents around us fell by up to 30 percent after the 2008 global financial crisis. We had to lay off staff as this lack of flexibility with one of our biggest fixed costs was really hurting us. It was a very stressful time to own a small business.

“So we were determined our customers would have some of the best working conditions and professional support available anywhere in New Zealand, so they can concentrate on their core business and leave the contextual stuff to us and our professional partners.”

Being an i-space, the first partner on board was local ICT company Glenn Cook Technologies, whose job it was to ensure customers have the best and most resilient networking and Internet experience possible. The ultra-secure Aruba system that powers the new network is normally found only in large corporate sites. Better still, like most services at Hastings HIVE, networking is included in the monthly rental plan.

“We have certainly gone to the next level with office fit-out,” says interior designer Amy Henderson, who recently returned to New Zealand from working in London. “The design brief was to create a sophisticated workplace that provides small businesses the opportunity to work in an environment that usually only large corporates can afford. Fundamentally, people work better when they love where they work.

“What sets this i-space apart from co-working spaces I have seen here and overseas is the quality of the fit-out, the high-end products we specified and the craftsmanship on display. MCL Construction (based in Hastings) have done a world-class job.”

Local architects Fat Parrot have designed a highly functional space that customers can adapt as needed but know that almost everything they might require is provided for, from fixtures and fittings to the café and lounge setting, meeting spaces and five-star hotel-like bathrooms.

This i-space, the first of many the Gill’s say, offers a range of flexible workspaces to suit most uses and budgets, starting from a one-person i-desk up to larger i-offices sized from 26 m2 to 78 m2 and suitable for six to twenty people. All this, amazingly, with a 30 to 40 percent lower total occupancy cost than leasing your own office, with no long fixed-term leases or guarantees required.

“Success for us will be seeing our first i-desk customer move to an i-office,” says Rob. “And that’s the incubator opportunity that we hope will boost the local economy – it’s about supporting people, growing business and creating jobs.”

Interested in leasing an i-space? Visit www.hastingshive.co.nz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colin Shanley packs away the tripod after 63 years

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In 2020 Colin will pack away his theodolite for the last time, drawing an end to a career that has spanned 63 years as a land surveyor. Over this time, he’s seen the emergence of Flaxmere as Hastings’ new suburb, the huge population growth of

Havelock North, and the subdivision of lifestyle blocks and rural properties into more smaller parcels of land.

Every work day morning for many of these years, Colin has got into his trusty white Nissan ute and driven into his office in Avenue Road,

Hastings. The firm has had just three licenced partners in nearly 90 years – Harry Davies who founded the firm Davies Newcombe in 1931, Norman Hewkin and Colin.

Colin attributes his work ethic, professional skills as well as his longstanding involvement in the community to Harry and Norman.

“I joined the firm straight out of school as a cadet and learned the trade. H.C. Davies was a wonderful man and a guy I respected and learned a lot from – not only in surveying but in all aspects of being a surveyor as well as being involved in the community.”

Colin’s work ethic has been exhaustive for his entire career, both in business and as a community leader. He was a three-term Havelock North Borough councillor and after amalgamation with Hastings, he spent two terms on the Hastings District Council.

He has also been a loyal and hard-working member of the Havelock North Rugby Club and the local squash club, spending hundreds of hours on build projects such as rugby and squash club rooms, fundraising for the Village Pool, Havelock North Library and Community Centre, and the restoring of the Village Domain pavilion.

As a land surveyor Colin says his approach has been to ensure that a residential or lifestyle development enhances the surrounding environment both for residents and the broader public.

“Our role is to always ensure that the quality of the environment is enhanced.”

Over his career Colin has seen Havelock North grow from 3,500 residents to over 15,000 and Hastings from just over 30,000 to over 70,000, as well as the emergence of Flaxmere in the late 1960s.

Shanley & Co was heavily involved in the development of sections in Flaxmere through to the early 1990s and at one stage was surveying 300 sections a year. He says that if it wasn’t for residential planning changes and an over-zealous social welfare system, Flaxmere could have looked considerably different today.

Initially Flaxmere had a grand entrance with sections larger than 700m2 along Flaxmere Avenue, which backed onto an extensive park (Flaxmere Park), but over time and as you go further into the suburb development, the housing standard deteriorated.

“A good form of development not only caters for the people who go into that environment but also the surrounding community. We’ve always looked to enhancement but there can be areas that become detrimental to residential growth and worthwhile development.”

At the opposite end of town, in Havelock North, the sleepy village has become a bustling residential and commercial hotspot that could have been shaped more differently had the Havelock North Borough not merged with Hastings.

Colin says that prior to the merger there was an opportunity, thanks to some good planners, to create a masterplan for the village. This included new residential development in Arataki, to the north, which is now only just being realised.

The Arataki extension was a proposed growth area that would provide Havelock for a population of 14,000.

However, Colin says all that has happened isn’t a criticism of amalgamation, more a reflection. He says with further residential development proposed over the next five years with Brookvale and Iona set to accommodate over 700 houses, along with a retirement village to be built in Te Aute Road, it’s time to look at a new masterplan that will relieve congestion in the CBD, around schools

and connectivity to Hastings.

“There’s no doubt that Havelock will need a third arterial road connecting to Hastings and that will happen to the south at St Georges Road, at the existing bridge across the Karamu creek.”

As Colin looks back on his career, he’s reluctant to single out his own personal achievements or any specific development but when pressed, he says the Enfield lifestyle development near Paki Paki is a standout.

He’s particularly proud of the relationships the firm has developed with many landowners across the district, as well as the long-standing contribution made by many of his loyal staff. Frank Nijssen has been with the firm for over 38 years and Aaron Britten for 28 years.

As he prepares to exit in 2020, he says that although the firm hasn’t kept pace with modern technology, he’s enthusiastic about the next era of the firm without him at the helm.

“I have had huge satisfaction in doing what I’ve done. We’re a bit old-school but that comes from the foundations of the business and the early years I spent with Harry Davies.

“We are a bit behind the eight ball when it comes to a modern practice but there will be a new environment here that means the firm will be very much alive and well after I’ve gone.

“I’m pulling out at the right time and in good heart. The new administration will move Shanley & Co onwards and upwards.”

Aaron Brittin has worked for Colin for nearly 30 years, starting straight out of high school and he’s in awe of what Colin has achieved in a professional capacity as well as his dedication to the community.

“He is devoted to his work and his integrity is unique and goes beyond the call. He deals with people in such a fair way and I’ve never seen him get flustered,” Aaron says.

Professionally, Colin is so well respected by his peers, many of whom have started their careers under his wings.

“They are in awe of his work ethic and how many survey plans we complete over the course of a year.”

Aaron says as a boss, you couldn’t get a better mentor and it’s no surprise that staff have stayed long term with the business.

“He’s taught me everything I know and is an icon within the survey profession,” Aaron says.

Fastway Couriers takes on international name – Aramex

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Fastway Couriers, New Zealand’s oldest courier business is adopting the brand name of its international parent company Aramex.

The change gives New Zealand businesses a seamless delivery network across the world as well as increasing delivery channels into New Zealand for global e-commerce retailers.

Established in Hawke’s Bay in 1983 by Bill McGowan, Fastway Couriers New Zealand has 18 regional franchisees with over 250 courier franchisees from the far north to Bluff in the South Island.

Aramex, a Dubai-based logistics group bought Fastway Couriers New Zealand in January 2016 for $125 million. Aramex is considered one of the top 5 logistics providers in the world with a presence in 72 countries, transporting nearly 70 million parcels globally each year.

Fastway Couriers NZ chief executive Scott Jenyns said the time was right to adopt the Aramex name with the significant rise in the parcel movements across the globe due to the explosion in e-commerce retail shopping and new technology advanced products.

“We are retaining our unique franchise business model but are gaining a global mindset with access to new innovations, new technologies and new shipping destinations.

“This is a major step forward for our local franchise operators but also for many New Zealand businesses that either export products to the world or import to New Zealand.

“The parcel and delivery industry has changed dramatically over the past 35 years, which started as a business to business offering but today over 80 percent of parcel movements are smaller than 3 kilograms and delivered to residential properties due to online retail.”

Mr Jenyns said the name change will also better align New Zealand with the Aramex international business strategy and extends the New Zealand service offering to the movement of envelope sized parcels to large shipping containers.

“We will now be able to position our New Zealand business as a full service logistics company which is of significant benefit to local exporters and importers, as well as international businesses sending products here.

Aramex Regional Chief Executive Officer Andy van der Velde said introducing the Aramex brand to New Zealand reflects the country as one of the most rapidly growing e-commerce markets in the region and we can serve more businesses and consumers online and through our strengthened distribution network.

“We can now tell a simple story to our international customers that Aramex is in New Zealand and can deliver to and from the country and this will have significant benefits for our NZ business partners,” Mr van der Velde said.

Mr Jenyns said the brand roll out will take approximately three months to complete and includes rebranding all of our nationwide offices and depots, over 300+courier vehicles  and for 500+ people employed and engaged with the company in New Zealand a brand-new look to their uniform. Our transport company (Transport Linehaul Ltd) will be completed in 2020.

“It’s a big exercise which has been keenly welcomed by our business franchisees and our business partners.

“The change is about improving how we move parcels. We can leverage off Aramex’s global footprint in New Zealand and introduce new products and services to build a bigger, stronger business in New Zealand and grow our franchisees in the process.

“We’ll still be local franchisees, in local regions, and this is very important to us as franchising remains in our DNA. The key point of difference is that now we’ll be able to offer greater global reach and opportunities to our customers and our people through career advancement opportunities.

“We have received increasingly positive feedback and there is a general feeling of excitement about what opportunities this could present for each of the regions in the near future.

Youth connectors paves way to the top for job starter

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Topline Contracting managing director Taurus Taurima is leading from the front when it comes to upskilling and inspiring his 26 strong workforce.

Taurus has gone back to school, joining 10 of his team, to do the EIT Hawke’s Bay’s Infrastructure Works course.

“Many of the team don’t have formal qualifications from school or otherwise, so the EIT course was a good opportunity to gain a qualification that’s aligned to the work we do.

“I thought, why not join them? My main focus is to point them in the right direction and to create opportunities for these young men – most of whom are young Māori fathers – to become achievers and good examples for their children.”

The EIT certificate course covers industry specific skills, plant and equipment maintenance and operation, health and safety and first aid. Other workers are doing a similar course in Civil Trades through national industry training organisation (ITO) Connexis.

Taurus says it’s pretty hard to recruit skilled workers in a strong economy and he’s now worked out a plan of having a good mix of skilled and/or experienced staff while giving some young and inexperienced a chance.

One of these is Keil McClutchie, who was offered a labourer’s position as part Topline Contracting managing director Taurus Taurima with Keil McClutchie of the Hastings District Council’s Youth Connector initiative.

Keil had returned from five years working as a scaffolder in Australia but was struggling to find a permanent job.

At the same time Taurus was approached by the council’s Youth Connector team to see if he had any roles available, as he had previously taken on job seekers from Ministry of Social Development.

The timing was perfect. Keil was prepared for the interview by a council’s Youth Connector team member and he duly got the job.

For Taurus, who started out as a labourer himself over 10 years ago, he wanted someone with the right attitude; he would do the rest.

“You know if they’re not right if they’ve taken three days off in three weeks. Keil was really keen both to work and learn from others. I’ve partnered him with a good foreman and Keil’s doing everything right.

“Giving a young person a chance from the Youth Connector programme is worth it. There’s a support network that helps the transition into work.”

Keil is enjoying his new job and learning new skills. He’s recently been working on the enhancement of Flaxmere Park.

“It beats staying at home. I’m learning a trade and there’s a good bunch of guys here to work with. I’m keen to make my way up through the business and I’ve got a good boss who leads from the front.”

Hastings District Council started the Youth Connector programme in 2017. It was given a $1.7 million funding boost from the government in 2018.

Hastings District Council social and youth development manager Dennise Elers says the annual target is to place 80 youth in work. With three months to go, 77 have already been employed, with 28 current job seekers. Council has engaged with 45 businesses and 22 have signed up – the annual target is 30.

“We are really pleased with how the programme is going. We’re very close to achieving all our targets and we are thrilled that 22 local business are supporting it.”

She says there is a strong emphasis on pastoral care, both in preparing youth for employment opportunities as well as follow-ups once they’ve been placed in a job.

“We try to make it as easy as possible for both the worker and the business owner. You do get the good and the bad but we do everything we can to ensure we get the right match,” she says.

EIT front foots once in a generation sector change

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Eastern Institute of Technology is pumping. 2019 sees an increase of 680 students up on last year’s record 10,325 people engaged in tertiary education through its three campuses in Hawke’s Bay, Tairāwhiti (Gisborne) and Auckland, across certificate, diploma, degree and post-graduate.

“Relationships with our communities are strong,” says Mark Oldershaw, EIT deputy chief executive.

Courses and programmes are constantly reviewed to meet learner and industry needs – the horticulture sector story featured on page 43 aptly demonstrates this. Students across all schools are successfully gaining employment or go on to further studies (2017: 75 percent in employment, 25 percent in study).

Then in mid-February this year, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins announced a Review of Vocational Education (ROVE) that put the institute into overdrive.

With only a six-week window to provide feedback on what Mark describes as “the most significant review of vocational education provision across New Zealand that we have ever seen. A once in a generation change”, intense activity ensued.

“While some of what the Minister has proposed is warranted, there is great risk that Hawke’s Bay will lose our regional autonomy to meet social and economic needs. EIT may no longer have the agility to respond with training to fill workforce skills gaps,” Mark says. “There was absolutely no question that we needed to respond with as much strategic and deep thinking as our collective intellect could provide.”

Within the first week, Mark and Chris Collins EIT Chief Executive had digested the ROVE proposal and marketplace intelligence around it. Overarching values were established – that any response, and the process to develop that response, would put people first and foremost. The focus being on the impact on the community and employers. Regional connectedness would be clearly demonstrated as crucial to EIT’s sustained success. “From the outset we utilised a principles- based approach. We were driven by the need to propose constructive feedback and solutions,” says Glen Harkness, EIT ROVE project manager.

Mark and Glen lead the project group. EIT’s executive team had ROVE steering group responsibilities added to their workloads. Extensive consultation with staff across all three campuses resulted in both academic and administrative staff volunteering to work on a number of workstreams, holding focus sessions to explore the proposal’s impact on EIT, what was supported, and where alternative ideas were needed.

The Wellington-based ROVE team spent a day in Hawke’s Bay meeting with staff, students, EIT Council and executive. An extremely well-supported stakeholders’ meeting was also held. Mayors or their representatives from Central Hawke’s Bay to Wairoa attended, expressing concerns about the region’s potential loss of direct input in determining how the tertiary institution could continue to respond to local education and training needs.

Initially one regional submission was planned. The region’s mayors, iwi and business leaders were all keen to vocalise their support for EIT. The resulting submission had 18 signatories from throughout East Cape and Hawke’s Bay.

“As time progressed it became apparent that one regional submission could not contain the level of detail that was coming out of the ideas from EIT,” said Glen. “The questions being asked in the consultation process required more comprehensive answers.

“It is such a critical issue that we needed to model with a finer level of detail how we could operate and connect with the community while still providing the Minister with the solutions he was seeking.”

In its second submission following further staff consultation and a solid level of agreement, the proposed EIT model sets out how strong regional governance and leadership can be preserved.

It promotes regional Boards to lead and govern tertiary education in their respective regions. Regional education and training delivery plans would be developed in consultation with local iwi, industry, community, students, region and the overarching central entity. Regional providers would deliver to the plans, giving a “real life, real learning fit for the real world”.

In addition, the EIT model has an overlay that demonstrates how industry and the Minister’s proposed industry skills boards would connect to the plan.

“We accept that some of what the Minister has stated as his reasons for the review are warranted but it’s critical that we present an alternative view. The tertiary vocational sector is not as broken as central Government makes out, certainly EIT is not struggling.

“We believe that despite the incredibly short timeframe, we’ve provided a much- improved model for stronger and better provider-based training,” sums up Mark.

“I am extremely proud that once again EIT has shown an amazing ability to pool together to contribute to a significant piece of work. I believe our submission reflects both our history and what defines us now, but also makes a very strong case for the values and principles we hold to be incorporated into a possible new model.”

Minister Hipkins indicated he wants the new entity that arises from the ROVE process to be in place on 1 January 2020. Work over the subsequent year or two will be needed to transition all 16 polytechnics and institutes of technology into the one new entity.

More information about ROVE and EIT’s submissions can be found at https://www. eit.ac.nz/about/reform-of-vocational- education/ – a page dedicated to sharing information on the review proposal and the EIT response.