Waterview tunnel construction manager Aucklander Chris Ashton is the winner of the 2015 Z Emerging Leader Award while Fulton Hogan graduate engineer David Kingham is the winner of the 2015 Z training development award.
The Z People Awards were organised by Civil Contractors New Zealand to recognises the outstanding achievements of individuals within the Civil Construction Industry.
Ashton works for McConnell Dowell and the Well-Connected Alliance as tunnel construction manager at the NZTA’s Waterview Connection.
He handles a crew of over 200 people, for emergency incident management and ongoing regulatory inspections of the tunnels.
“Chris is a highly motivated and able manager with strong leadership skills and sound tunnelling, engineering and management experience on infrastructure projects of great scale, ” say the award judges.
Mt Maunganui-based Kingham, is employed by Fulton Hogan and is currently working on minor safety works contracts around the wider Bay of Plenty.
His responsibilities include staff supervision and management planning and programming and quality and safety on the contract, overseeing this for up to five different sites at one time. The works are on a programme with a zero harm record.
Judges praised his commitment to getting exposure in as many areas of the contracting industry as possible.
“Through summer work and graduate rotations, he has worked in laboratories, quarries, asphalt sealing, field testing, structures and now civil construction and project management,” say the judges.
“At Z, we reckon it’s great to be able to recognise young people in the industry who are taking control of their development, with the Z People Awards,” says Z customer relationship manager Mark Watson.
“This year we have seen some amazing entries – so many, in fact, that we weren’t able to separate the runners up.”
Ashton and Kingham have each received a range of prizes, including a trophy, $1,000, the services of an industry mentor for a year, Fly By points from Z and a subscription to Contractor Magazine.
