01 Big Day In
22 Degrees turns 20 in 2020. So our annual staff conference theme in late February was a no brainer – Vision 2020 it was. We developed our vision three years ago and it’s a simple one. Be the consultancy people want to work with again. Simple to say, not so easy to do.
When clients choose to work with us again and again, we don’t take it for granted. We know we need to keep delivering and improving our service. Our annual conference is a key way we review the past year and look ahead at how we can do things even better. With feedback, discussion, training and planning, we focused on how we can keep striving to achieve our vision.
Highlights included Kiwibank’s Chief Economist, Jarrod Kerr, who was upbeat about the economy in the medium term. That’s once a wee virus you may have heard of, has done its dash.
We looked at our values and how we can live those every day, had a session on how to coach and mentor and some project management training. Lots of participation and good ideas came out of the day.
02 Big Day Out
It’s been full on for the last few months so it was great to get off site last week for some R&R and thank the team for their dedication. Blastacars – drift k arts was a blast and gave us an insight into everyone’s true colours. We discovered some of our team were super competitive and others we thought of as mild types turned into Lewis Hamilton on the track. Eranda got both the Driving Miss Daisy and the Most Improved Driver awards so with a couple more laps he might have taken out the top trophy. Jedd was our ultimate winner closely followed by Ryan (although Ryan thinks it was the other way round).
We finished our afternoon at The Hunting Lodge for a fabulous dinner in gorgeous surrounds.
03 Emerging Professionals
Now we’re an official partner with Engineering New Zealand, we’re working more closely with them and our intermediate engineers to support their pathway to becoming chartered. We launched our Emerging Professional Engineers programme at our conference. This provides mentoring, training, feedback, assessment and a series of milestones which engineers much reach.
04 New Arrivals
David Szoke joined the Hydraulics design team just before Christmas last year. He has worked for several years in mechanical, hydraulics and fire protection design in South Africa and the Middle East. He started off life in New Zealand with just one wife and son and like 22 Degrees, he is already growing his local whanau. They are expecting their second child later this year and he or she will be the first Kiwi born member of the Szoke family.
Josh Hasloch has joined 22 Degrees as our Business Manager. He has worked on several key projects for us over the past four months and brings with him a wealth of business experience and a passion for business improvement. In this newly created position he is driving a range of innovations and process upgrades which are making a big impact on our efficiency.
Richard Gourlie joined our Graduate Programme before Christmas last year. He’s an AUT Electrical graduate and is working in our electrical team and taking to building services like a duck to water.
Mel Cains is our new everything when it comes to administration in this newly created role. She’s got loads of expertise in projects, coordination, marketing, systems, events, PD, H&S – the list goes on and on. She will be working closely with management and our Project Leaders to provide critical support as well as look after her own internal projects.
05 Project Spotlight
Tarawera High School
Tarawera High School is nestled in the small town of Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty and caters for students Years 7 to 13. The design took on a collaborative process, involving the school and surrounding community. The architects created open plan learning spaces to be used for a multitude of subjects and also provided spaces that can be used by the community.
From an engineering perspective, we worked closely with the architects to provide passive ventilation to the building, all controlled by an on site weather station.
The outcome was a range of fully automated, naturally ventilated, temperature controlled spaces. This result was achieved by a collaborative and pragmatic approach coordinated with RTA.