When Brendon Graham finished the Māori and Pasifika leadership programme Whakatupu, he knew straight away that he wanted to share the course with as many people as possible.

Brendon, who is National Transport and Driver Training Manager, says he’d found the course ‘moving and transformational’. In particular, he wanted to encourage his team member Jess Kairau to take part. “She’s got her whole career ahead of her, and I knew it would give her a great foundation for her future. I firmly believe one day she’ll be my boss!”.

Jess, who works as a Bitumen Transport Dispatcher, initially wasn’t sure it was the right course for her but took a place in last year’s second cohort. “Brendon was raving about it, but I wasn’t sure what to think. In the end it was amazing. I walked out with so much knowledge.”

The course has given Jess the confidence to aim for the next stage in her career. “I’m not at a management level but now a lightbulb’s gone off. I’m not scared to approach conversations with management about where I want to be. I want to be at the table and that’s where I’m going now.”

Jess took part in the course with fellow Higgins whānau Edward Wallace, Hoani Taratoa, Pat Junior Karauna-Wharerimu and Aroha Tuhura.

Whakatupu is a course run by our parent company, Fletcher Building, and aims to increase the number of Māori and Pasifika leaders in the business. It consists of five modules each delivered in a two-day workshop. Modules are held at Fletcher House and on a marae with overnight stays. Participants also have one-on-one coaching, as well as working as a group to develop a cultural initiative for the business.

We’re proud to support a programme that’s facilitating construction careers using a Te Ao Māori approach. Our Wairarapa team is involved in He Kahui Wairarapa’s Mahi Ora programme which supports Wairarapa locals who’re interested in a career in civil construction.

Mahi Ora, which is funded by local iwi and the Ministry for Social Development, also offers pastoral support to the people involved. This includes helping them learn about financial management and find rental accommodation. Ed Ward, Higgins Wairarapa Construction Manager provided guidance to the trainers and trainees, saying it gives him an opportunity to build on his link with the community. “My good friend and neighbour, Joe Nuku leads He Kahui Wairarapa and has been talking to me for a few years about how to best run the programme and get young people into construction. He got the programme up and running when I joined Higgins Wairarapa, so it was perfect timing.”

He says some of the trainees have also lost touch with their iwi, hapū, marae and whānau. “The course helps them to reach out and reconnect, and to find their identities.”

The Mahi Ora programme recently had its first batch of graduates – with all eight people who started in the programme graduating and ready for work. Ed says Higgins Wairarapa has been interviewing graduates for some roles. The team has offered one graduate a role in the 2024 Cadet Program with more roles opening up in the new year.

“We have also recently recruited two graduates from MSD traffic management training programme, one going straight into traffic management and the other starting as a labourer with our surfacing team.”

“It’s historically harder to recruit in Wairarapa as younger people tend to leave for bigger towns and cities. Mahi Ora assists with our recruitment strategies and by partnering up we can help mould the programme to our needs as a business.”

SPPEEx (South Pacific Professional Engineering Excellence) marked two decades of supporting Māori and Pasifika professionals within the construction and engineering industries. 

The twenty-year anniversary celebration included a cocktail-style event, featuring cultural performances and messages from founding members. It was an opportunity for the group to highlight their key milestones, including last year’s feat of securing three foundation sponsors – Fletcher Construction, Beca and Watercare. Prior to that, SPPEEx operations were either self-funded or supported by ad hoc grants.

The group’s board includes a number of Fletcher Construction team members: Vice President Cory Teina (NZICC), Secretary Fatima Atonio (BPC), Communications Officer 'Ofa Halatanu (BPC) and Sports Officer Francis Swanney-Fetalaiga (Higgins).

Cory says it’s really important to represent Māori and Pasifika voices. “There are not that many of us in the engineering space, particularly in leadership roles. If we can improve our numbers across the board and develop that pool of talent, it would help provide a great pathway for the next generation. That’s why we put a fair bit of mahi in, focusing on school and university levels, to promote engineering as a viable career. Engineering, in a nutshell, is about problem solving, and with all the advancements in technology and innovation within the construction/engineering industries, it’s a great time to get amongst it” he says.

“The ongoing sponsorship is huge for us as it improves our ability to host events to connect and grow our community and strengthen ties with Māori and Pasifika students from the University of Auckland, Unitec, AUT and MIT,” Teina says.

Higgins' Rangiuru Business Park interchange project team supported the Te Puke High School Driving Programme. The school programme enables students who may not have access to what is needed to learn to drive – a vehicle, someone to teach them, or the available funds to pay the license fees. It not only gets the students on the road, but also opens the doors to future opportunities for employment and training.

Knowing that having safe and competent drivers on our roads will help reduce accidents, our team assisted 10 students to gain their learner's license through the programme, and all 10 students are now delighted learner's license holders.

Our Fiji-based team has delivered hundreds of cubic metres of building materials to villages close to one of their major current projects.

The team is working on the refurbishment of the Westin Resort, and has donated timber, tiles, blockwork and other building materials to local villages in the region for use in building houses, shelters and walkways. This has not only helped the local people, but has also kept the materials out of landfill. These villages include Sikituru, Yavusania & Maqalevu amongst others.

Maqalevu Village Elder Timoci Says has given his thanks to the team. “The village of Maqalevu would like to give thanks to Fletcher Construction Fiji for all the materials given to them this year, it has been a great help in building new houses for some while also helping to make toilets and walkways.”

Brian Perry Civil hosted Fletcher Construction and Watercare graduates for a hands-on day at the Snells Beach Wastewater Treatment Plant, which we’re constructing for Watercare.

The event gave members of the graduate programmes an opportunity to learn first-hand about the work being done through the Enterprise Model.

BPC graduates based at the site took on leadership roles in helping to plan the visit, run Health & Safety inductions, and lead small groups around the site where it was safe to do so. Engineering Services & Innovation Manager Brendan Attewell and Temporary Works Manager Melissa van Vollenhoven lead a practical session on temporary works, using outrigger assessment and crane inspection to develop understanding. Operations Manager Chris Turner, Project Engineer Natasha van Nieuwenhuizen, and Site Engineer Sakhi Ehsani shared their career experiences and advice with the graduates.

Fletcher Construction’s programme enables graduates in a range of disciplines to understand the variety of work being delivered across business units and to get practical exposure to projects like Snells Beach being delivered within the Enterprise Model.

Our teams care about the world around them, but they also care about one another.

After Cyclone Gabrielle, our Brian Perry Civil team provided care packages to our Higgins colleagues hard hit in Hawke's Bay.

The aim was to share some aroha and show support for the Higgins’ team members doing the hard yards in the region in very tough conditions. Packs were sent to six site teams and the office team, with each pack having enough treats for five to six people.

We were really proud to host a recent kōrero with the AUT School of Future Environments about how infrastructure providers and Mana Whenua can build positive relationships.

It’s an area where many of us have a lot to learn, so this was a great opportunity for our people, partners and customers to listen to the wisdom of Rawiri Faulkner (Mana Whenua Partnerships Manager, Te Arana Alliance), Otene Reweti (Pou Hononga, Watercare), and Val Panui (Kaitohutohu Ahurea Matua, Fletcher Building) – facilitated by AUT professor Tania Ka’ai.

We discussed what we can all do on an individual level as well as what we can do better as businesses. Take a look at the video to learn more. 

Fletcher Construction gave Ōtaki College digital media students real-life filming experience on the Peka Peka to Ōtaki Expressway project.

The students documented the project as it went along. Deep Patel and Ethan Rutter captured this footage on the eve of opening the expressway to traffic in December 2022. 

Our Higgins Christchurch team helped freshen up Ararira Springs Primary School’s main car park with new markings.

Neil Andrews, Christchurch City Council contract engineer, approached the team late last year on this project.

The Ararira Springs Primary School board thanked Higgins Christchurch for enhancing the school and making it a safer place for the community.

Higgins project engineer Anthony Godetz said the team was proud and grateful for the opportunity to improve the overall safety of the school and support the Ararira Springs community. “We enjoyed every step of the project. The positive feedback and smiles on the people’s faces are priceless.”

Group photo shows, from left: Anthony, Ararira Springs Primary school principal Claire Howison, Neil with his daughters.

All women at Fletcher Construction have the opportunity to apply for our Women to Leadership programme. 

The programme sees women spending a year in a group mentoring setting and completing specially-designed workshops. The programme aims to support women's rise through the ranks at Fletcher Construction. Women to Leadership was designed by organisational culture specialist Dr Galia Barhava-Monteith.

Each year, the Higgins Masterton branch offers local school leavers the chance to ‘earn and learn’.

They advertise though Trade Me, and work with Careers Advisors at local low-decile schools to give young people a possible career opportunity as well as giving something back to the community.

Like our Gateway Programme, this cadetship offers younger people a taste of construction and busts some industry myths thanks to hands-on experience.

This programme invests in our local communities as well as the future of our business. With a widening gap between our long-serving team and new blood coming in, we want to promote construction as a viable career option through as many avenues as we can.

The programme runs for nine months (January to September) on a full-time work basis and each cadet spends about a month with each division at the branch. This includes subdivisions, three waters, commercial and residential, local authority road maintenance, aggregates, and surfacing. Cadets get paid and gain NZQA qualifications and driver licenses as they go. 

Some previous cadets have stayed with Higgins and gone on to gain their full driver license, class 5 license, become supervisors, and one of the team is 90% through his drain layer’s certificate. 

Brian Perry Civil was proud to welcome NAWIC (National Association of Women in Construction) members to the Seaview Energy Resilience Project for a recent site visit. 

BPC has been engaged by CentrePort Ltd with designers Holmes Aus & NZ to carry out structural strengthening works on this critical regional infrastructure.  

The team took NAWIC members on a tour of the site, explaining the challenges of delivering the project around regular fuel tanker arrivals, along with the weather and tides.

Most works are being completed from a jack-up barge and custom-designed access platforms installed under the wharf in the tidal zone. 

Higgins is proud to offer the Gateway Programme to young people wanting to try a career in construction.

Gateway is a work experience programme for students between years 11-13. Higgins supports Gateway by offering students practical work experience for one day a week over 10 weeks.

During the programme, students complete industry-related unit standards through on-the-job learning, which contribute towards their NCEA results. They also get the chance to experience what a career with Higgins has to offer.

Dakota Linton Jennings, a student from Karamu High School, is one of these students. She recently completed the programme with Higgins Hawke’s Bay. Dakota attended a Girls with Hi-Vis event and enjoyed the digger experience so much she decided to find out more about the construction industry. “I looked into the industry and decided that’s what I want to do as a career,” Dakota says.

Wish4Fish charity founder Bryce Dinneen was blown away to be presented with a $25,000 donation from the team building the new Winstone Wallboards plant in Tauriko.

The donation from Fletcher Construction, Winstone Wallboards and other on-site contractors, was made following a presentation Bryce gave at their end of year Health and Safety meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to encourage the team to take their work-based focus on health and wellbeing home with them over summer.

Bryce Dineen is someone with first-hand experience of why that’s such an important message. He suffered a high-level spinal injury during a shallow-water diving incident in 2007, and has since founded the “Wish4Fish” charity to give people with a physical or mental disability the chance to go fishing on special wheelchair-accessible boats.

Bryce says he was very inspired by the event. “Like Fletcher Construction, I’m a massive advocate of health and wellbeing, whether it’s on the water or on the land. The team on the project was very engaging, and I had some great conversations after my presentation”.

He says the $25,000 donation will make a huge difference.

“We budget around $250 per person to take people with physical or mental disabilities out on the water, so their donation will help 100 people have that experience along with their caregivers, which is incredible”.

Site Health and Safety Manager Todd Pearce says they closed the site for the meeting, and had around 220 people gathered to hear Bryce. He says the talk touched on some amazing topics. “It was a really emotional talk. The guys were really touched with what Bryce had to say, and I know his safety message has really hit home for them. I hope what he’s shared helps to keep them all safe over their summer holidays.”

Our Higgins Christchurch team has given the playground of Te Kōmanawa Rowley School a much-needed makeover.

It was a nice surprise to welcome back the Hoon Hay school's students after their school holiday. Along with subcontractors Bond Earthworks and SprayMarks, we gave the kids a new basketball hoop and linemarkings on the basketball courts, volleyball court as well as the gutter ball and four-square courts.

Tim Day, Higgins South Island Manager, says it’s a privilege to support a school that's making a real difference in the lives of students, many of whom come from disadvantaged circumstances. “We know the great work the staff at Te Kōmanawa Rowley School do for their community and wanted to support them in their mission.”

Tim thanks the school for the opportunity to provide facilities which engage their students through learning and play. “What a fantastic cause to be even a small part of. Big shout out to all the staff and teachers – modern day heroes!” 

Group photo shows (from left): Higgins Operations Manager Mondri Du Preez, Higgins staff Brent Leishman and Karl Todd, Bond Earthworks Senior Contracts Manager Scott Hickling, School Principal Graeme Norman, Bond Earthworks Owner Mark Bond, and Bond Earthworks Project Manager Larry Seator.

Getting kids interested in engineering careers IS rocket science. To be specific, it's designing, building and launching water rockets.

Thanks to Fletcher Construction trainee site engineer Tom Morton, a year five class at St Heliers School was able to build their own rockets. It's part of Engineering New Zealand's Wonder Project, which aims to build kids' interest in STEM careers.

The project gets kids to think about the whole process of launching a rocket, from how many fins they need through to how heavy they should be. Tom helped the class for a month, from design to launch, explaining basic engineering principles along the way.

Tom said the kids loved the process, and were very interested in what being an engineer entails. At the time, Tom was a trainee engineer at the NZICC (New Zealand International Convention Centre) project and the class was keen to hear about the engineers working on the project.  "A few weeks before the kids launched their rockets, they went on a class trip up the Sky Tower. It was cool for them for them to look down on the NZICC and to know a bit about what I do there," Tom says.

(Photos by Tim Hamilton, VisionWorks Photography)

We host special events around the country to inspire girls and young women to consider a career in construction.

This is part of the Connexis Girls with Hi-Vis initiative that aims to encourage more women into infrastructure training and careers.

These events range from hands-on time with our machinery, discussions about the career paths our women have taken, and a trip to view one of our most iconic projects – the Sky Tower.

For some students, this programme leads into further study with us through the Gateway programme. 

Fletcher Construction is proud to support Māori and Pasifika engineers by sponsoring SPPEEx.

SPPEEx (South Pacific Professional Engineering Excellence) supports Māori and Pasifika people in engineering. SPPEEx has been around for almost 20 years, but until recently has been predominantly funded by small grants and membership fees. Now, with the financial support of Fletcher Construction, Beca and Watercare, the group has ambitious plans for the future.

SPPEEx Vice President and Fletcher Construction Planner Cory Teina says he’s stoked Fletcher Construction has agreed to support SPPEEx’s mahi. “As with any voluntary operation, it can be tricky getting initiatives off the ground and even trickier keeping them going in a sustainable way. Having the backing from organisations like Fletcher Construction really helps the cause. We’re now able to put on more events on a larger scale and better connect our community. We’ve already got a few ideas in the pipeline, so it’s exciting times ahead."

Fletcher Construction graduate engineers Fatima Atonio and Francis Swanney-Fetalaiga and site engineer Ofa Halatanu are also on the SPPEEx executive team.

To celebrate our sponsorship, we hosted an event at our office to celebrate Māori and Pasifika women in engineering.

Congratulations to Cory Teina for his 2022 appointment for another term as Vice President of SPPEEx (South Pacific Professional Engineering Excellence) and 'Ofa Halatanu as the Communications (Social Media) Officer.

SPPEEx is an organisation that aims to support and encourage Māori and Pasifika professional engineers in New Zealand, the Pacific and beyond.

Both Fletcher Construction Senior Construction Planner Cory and BPC Site Engineer ‘Ofa have overcome challenges in their engineering careers.

“Learning to interact and operate confidently around people of a completely different background and culture has provided its challenges, but it’s all learning and part of being able to adapt,” Cory says.

Ofa says that changing her perspective has been helpful. “My roots and culture are not a disadvantage. Instead, they bring heaps of opportunities.”

There are plenty of opportunities in construction, but it can take a special person to help young people get a foot on the ladder.

At Brian Perry Civil, one of those people is Foundations Resource Manager Michael Tokoma. Mike wants to make sure a career like his own is available to kids growing up in South Auckland. That’s seen him heading directly into some of the local high schools to talk to interested students.

Four years ago, Mike started with Tangaroa College where his sister Cushla was a teacher. That saw him find roles for four young people at BPC. Three are still with the company: Truman Koale, Siu Evaimalo and Ngatokoiva Kaveriri. Mike's extremely proud of the trio, who are now in leadership roles.

Truman Koale considers Mike's sister to be one of the greatest teachers he's ever had. So when Cushla suggested he meet Mike, Truman trusted her - a decision that's paid off. "At BPC, I've learned more than what I imagined I'd be learning. A lot of doors have opened up," Truman says.

Ngatokoiva Kaveriri says starting at the bottom of the ladder is hard work. "But the more you commit to it, the more you'll get back. In our team, we've got people who support us, such as Mike and the boys I started with. They support me, and I'll support them too."

Photo, from left: Mike, Ngatokoiva and Truman

Fletcher Construction is a major sponsor of the Bridges to Schools programme.

Working with colleagues at Fletcher Building and our friends at Auckland University of Technology, we were able to fund and organise the fabrication of a child-size cable-stayed bridge. The bridge is being taken to schools around Aotearoa, giving students from year 5-13 the chance to get hands-on engineering experience. Volunteers introduce the bridge to students then allow them to put the bridge together, testing their engineering understanding as they go.  

Bridges to Schools is an Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) international programme. Its New Zealand launch was sponsored by Fletcher Construction, Auckland University of Technology, Altus NZ Limited, PlaceMakers and Easysteel.

When our New Zealand International Convention Centre (NZICC) site office opened right across the road from the Auckland City Mission, the team wanted to help out their new neighbours. 

They held a Christmas gift collection to support the mission. Presents piled up under their tree that was handmade by Forman Commercial Interiors National Manager Tim Wittermans.

A big pile of gifts including several unicorns, some ninjas and a big box of Lego was handed to the mission, ready to put big smiles on little faces.

Christmas elf Theo Winstanley helped to distribute the gifts collected by the NZICC team - gratefully received by The City Mission. 

Higgins has sponsored the Hawke’s Bay Sports Park since it opened in 2010 in support of the Sports Park Trust’s vision and determination to provide a comprehensive and high-quality sporting facility for the community and to give back to the community that has supported Higgins since 1971.

In 2016 Higgins confirmed a sponsorship with a five-year investment of $250,000 and continues today to be a proud sponsor.

Higgins’ initial involvement in the Hawke's Bay was the purchase of Belspray Asphalts and a Bitumen Marine terminal at the Port of Napier in the 1970’s. Today Higgins has in excess of 130 Hawke’s Bay staff. Over this time Higgins has made significant investments in the region with the expansion of its contracting operation and its bitumen handling facility at the Port of Napier which now distributes bitumen to the Hawke’s Bay region and the lower North Island.

Cancer affects everyone. The Cancer Society - Relay for Life is a great annual community initiative that brings people together to raise funds for cancer research and the society's support activities. In the Manawatu, Higgins have participated in the relay every year since 2001 with a team and raised $232,000 during this time for the Cancer Society.