Chris and David lead the way in Z People Awards

Chris and David lead the way in Z People Awards

Chris Ashton has worked his way ‘From the ground up’ in the Construction Industry, while David Kingham is at an earlier stage of his career and taking full advantage of training opportunities.

Now both have been recognised with top honours in the Z People Awards, organised by Civil Contractors New Zealand to recognise the outstanding achievements of individuals within the Civil Construction Industry.

Chris has been named the Z Emerging Leader for 2015 while David won the Z Training Development category.

Chris, from Auckland, works for McConnell Dowell and the Well-Connected Alliance for New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).

He is Tunnel Construction Manager at the NZTA’s Waterview Connection, the largest road infrastructure project in New Zealand.

Awards judges said: “Chris is a highly motivated and able tunnel construction manager with strong leadership skills and sound tunnelling, engineering and management experience on infrastructure projects of great scale.”

Chris is responsible for a crew of over 200 people, for emergency incident management and for ongoing regulatory inspections of the tunnels.

Graduate engineer David, from Mt Maunganui, 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 programme with a zero harm record.

Judges praised David’s 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.”

Mark Watson, Z Customer Relationship Manager, said: “At Z, we believe that people at all levels can be encouraged to make a difference through leadership, and we reckon it’s great to be able to recognise young people in the industry who are leading, and those who are taking control of their development, with the Z People Awards.

“This year we have seen some amazing entries – so many, in fact, that we weren’t able to separate the runners up. We reckon that just proves that the future of the industry is very bright indeed.”

Chris and David 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. All finalists also received free registration and accommodation to attend the CCNZ annual conference in Taupo.

ENDS

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