Civil Contractors New Zealand has a new technical manager on its staff, working to progress interests of membership and provide expert advice gained through years working in the industry.
STACY GOLDSWORTHY is the newest addition to the Civil Contractors New Zealand team. He has joined as the technical manager, and his role has him progressing the interests of the organisation on various committees and working groups, as well as providing technical advice to the membership.
His many years working in the industry have provided him with a sound base of technical expertise and knowledge gained from experience, and his interest in the continued improvement of the civil construction sector made him an ideal candidate for his new role.
After school, he went to work for Worley Group (which was later absorbed by Aecom), spending seven years in its Hamilton lab. He says his role had a good balance between lab-based and field-based work.
“My work involved test pits, subdivision investigations and undertaking typical tests done by a civil engineering laboratory,” he says.
“We’d dig up a road to understand why it hadn’t performed as expected, and suggest treatments to rectify the problem.”
His next role saw him move to Svedala (bought by Metso Minerals in 2001). He was employed as an application specialist and ran the laboratory that was based on site.
About half his time was spent at the Barmac factory located in Matamata. The other half of his time was involved looking at the application of Svedala’s wider crushing and screening offering in the New Zealand quarrying market.
At the Barmac factory, Stacy’s job was to develop the technical side and assess the performance capability of the Barmac vertical shaft impactors (VSIs), attempting to understand wear, developing models, and predicting how various rocks would crush.
After two years, he went with the company to the UK, where he spent six months as a servicing and commissioning engineer throughout Europe.
Choosing to stay longer in the UK, Stacy got a job with building materials supplier Lafarge Aggregates for the next 18 months. He ran Lafarge’s largest clean fill operation, located just north of London, where he was responsible for the operation meeting its compliance and resource consents obligations, as well as managing the team and all the subcontractors on site.
He came home to New Zealand in 2004, returning to Metso Minerals as a technical specialist.
“I ended up doing application support for Barmac – pretty similar to what I’d been doing for them previously – and also a bit of R&D.”
Towards the end of this stint with Metso he was involved with the global strategy team that defined what Metso best practice looked like.
His next position was with Winstone Aggregates, starting as technical manager, then moving to manufacturing manager, before becoming the technical manager for Australasia.
“As manufacturing manager, I spent three years looking at specifications, doing R&D, and implementing KPIs to improve quarry performance. I looked at our quarries, assessing their performance and equipment to see how we could optimise their capabilities.
“Then, when I when I became technical manager for Australia and New Zealand, I spent a fair amount of time travelling to our Australian sites.”
However, this was not the first time his job saw him travelling. Stacy says that when he was with Metso he travelled about 120 days in the year to places as far flung as South America and Europe, something he describes as full on.
In 2014 he joined Green Vision Recycling as its general manager, overseeing aggregate recycling, reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) processing, and topsoil production, staying there until an industry friend and colleague, suggested a new role, working for the industry.
Stacy spent a number of years serving on various industry committees – including as chair of the AQA technical committee – and working groups, and along the way met Alan Stevens, who was originally technical manager for Roading New Zealand and then CCNZ for a total of 16 years.
Alan is someone Stacy has a lot of respect for, saying Alan has made a significant contribution to the industry during his time at Roading NZ and CCNZ. So, when Alan told Stacy he thought he would be well suited to the technical manager position with CCNZ, Stacy listened.
“It was a good change,” says Stacy of the move which took place at the beginning of the year. “I’ve been involved with committees and the like for a while; it is good to be representing people who are genuinely interested in discussing issues and have a keenness to make progress.”
His job involves running a number of committees for CCNZ. He is responsible for setting agendas and supporting the membership as well as representing the organisation in other, client-led groups. He does this by splitting his time between his home office in rural west Auckland, and being at mission control, CCNZ headquarters at Margen House in Wellington.
His role also has him administering a couple of industry self-regulation programmes, in particular, the E2 certification for the registration of bitumen sprayers, which requires them to be checked annually, and the Asphalt Plant Accreditation Scheme (APAS).
“I’m also working on a range of different documents CCNZ puts out to industry. The first cab off the rank being the industry Code of Practice on safe handling of bitumen.
“There is a significant amount of work required to update this document. However, the timing is good with the recent change to the Health & Safety Act [HSWA].”
On top of that, Stacy is just a phone call away for members who are requiring technical advice.
“I help where I can or, if necessary, I’ll pass them on to the right person or an expert who can assist.”
If you do need technical advice, you can phone Stacy on 021 786 479 or email him at stacy@civilcontractors.co.nz.
His advice is free to members. And if you see him at conference or around the traps, say hello.
This article was first published in Contractor‘s April issue.