Around the Chapters

NAWIC Auckland hosted several fantastic events in conjunction with sponsors.

Highlights included construction site visits to the Sands Retirement Village and Waste Management's new head office. We had an afternoon tea at Makita's office where Makita showed us the new tools they had to offer; and a sell-out presentation on the Living Building Challenge - a new way of thinking about sustainability and design.

We also worked with Girl Guiding New Zealand to put on an event for 40 girls to show them the possibilities of careers in construction, with five interactive stations each focussing on a different career path.

Upcoming events in 2019 include Hands On with Hirepool (14 November) and our annual holiday celebration which will occur in the last week of November (date and details to be announced shortly).

Here in Wellington, we have had a great year with a variety of site visits and speaker events, and we have also made some new industry connections which will lead to different events in 2020.

These have led to two events already – the first being with Master Builders Masterton where over 100 women from the Wairarapa construction industry gathered at Solway Park to network, celebrate their achievements and to hear from inspirational speakers.

The second led to our collaboration with NZIOB in July for our keynote speaker event where we were inspired, entertained and challenged by Steph Dhyrberg.

This year we have been on various site visits including a trip to Pacific Door Systems, the Arrow site on Dixon St, Thermosash Factory, Johnsonville Library, Public Trust Building, a back of house visit to WCC and the Paramount to name a few. Hands on Hirepool is an annual favourite and was, as always, a great event! We also had our special screening of ‘Hut’ and went to a movie. We had a fab Christmas function and mid-winter ‘do’ where we were once again spoiled by the generosity of our sponsors.

Many great speakers have shared their knowledge with us and we appreciate their time.

We’ve been part of a quiz evening, a speed dating session for students, and a pre-school reading programme.

I am proud to represent our fabulous Committee and want to thank them for their support over the year as I have been learning my role as Chair. I feel fortunate that all of our current Committee are staying on - thank you Alice Carmody, Charlotte Young, Gaya Paranisamy, Jodie Mickleson, Julie Stewart , Judith Billington, Lianne Cox and Sarah Toase.

Still to come this year:

November 14th: lunch presentatio n THE 'NO DRAMA' APPROACH TO PROJECT COMMUNICATIONS By Julia Anderson

This year has been about building on the structure we had established last year and gaining some more momentum.

We have had a good mix of events, including our ‘Hut’ documentary screening at the beginning of the year; a site visit to The Arts Centre; our big event of the year Wellness in Construction; the ever-popular ‘Hands on with Hirepool;’ our Girl Guiding collaboration as well as a number of other informative events such as our ‘Tips and tricks for drafting NZS3910 contracts’ seminar.

We had Pip Buunk, our NAWIC Excellence Award’s tradeswoman of the year 2018 winner, and Liz

Hodgson a long time regular event attendee and NAWIC supporter, join us on the committee this year which is awesome. Unfortunately though, we have also had two recent resignations from the committee, Sherry Peck and Melanie Russell, both of whom are moving on to exciting new jobs. We wish them the best. I also want to thank our other two dedicated committee members Lisa and Steph for all the work they have put in this year. It is hugely appreciated.

We have a local planning day coming up at the end of November where we will put together a calendar of events for the year including deadlines and email mailout dates, and allocate specific tasks so that we have all roles adequately covered within our small committee. Our aim is to establish further structure going forward to make all of our roles more streamlined, and to achieve the best results going forward for our members.