9 August 2022:
Fulton Hogan’s message at this year’s Local Government NZ (LGNZ) conference in Palmerston North was hard to mistake.
With the conference theme Te Wā Heke Mai (The Future), the flooring of the Fulton Hogan stand was recycled road cones, the carbon dashboards were displayed publicly for the first time and New Zealand CEO Ben spoke at the conference dinner about “engineering out carbon emissions”.
Fulton Hogan has sponsored the LGNZ Fulton Hogan Conference dinner and the premier award – the Fulton Hogan Local Excellence Award – for more than 20 years. That was when Ben was still at school, and he took the opportunity to talk about the effect of the accelerating rate of change.“When I started with Fulton Hogan as a graduate, it was the first year Fulton Hogan site engineers were issued with a mobile phone. Now every step of a construction process is fully digital and mobile,” he told the 600 guests.
He raised the wider significance of the carbon dashboard on display on Fulton Hogan’s stand – allowing the 250 departments in New Zealand to track monthly emissions and monitor progress towards the company’s carbon reduction goals.
As well as environmental change, Ben highlighted the changes needed to address shifting social, economic and cultural sands.
“One of the great things about Fulton Hogan is we’re loaded with engineers, and engineers like to solve problems.
“Thinking outside the square has led us to establish new ways of bringing people into our industry. The Infrastructure Skills Centre, in which we were a founding partner, is a highly successful ‘earn as you learn’ programme we are now delivering across the country.”
He also highlighted partnerships with the NZ Defence Force and Girls in Infrastructure as among the best examples of how the company is addressing these changes.
The premier award on the night – the Fulton Hogan Local Excellence Award – was won by Porirua City Council for restoring the health of hundreds of kilometres of streams and its harbour.
Selwyn District Council won the Excellence Award for Cultural Wellbeing for Te Ara Ātea, a district-wide cultural facility in Rolleston’s town centre.
Central Hawke’s Bay District Council won the Excellence Award for Economic Wellbeing for Jobs in Central Hawke’s Bay, which has transformed employment opportunities.
Hutt City Council’s Te Awa Kairangi Kai Collective – a community-led initiative helping put food on the table during the Covid-19 pandemic – won the Excellence Award for Social Wellbeing.
