Winner: Max Goodman, Goodman Contractors
Max Goodman of Waikanae-based Goodman Contractors won the latest round of the EPIC Photo Competition (themes ‘technology’), after sending in an awesome photo of Goodmans’ excavator operator Mitch doing the final work on the Peka Peka to Otaki Expressway using a GPS system built into his excavator.
“We have been using GPS for a very long time now, but we have integrated it a lot more over the past five years,” he says.
“It works across the board – even some of our best operators who have been using eye level to do their finishing have now moved across.”
Max says it’s important to have precision and a good quality finish, something that can be tricky to achieve when working on projects of the scale of the expressway project. The GPS technology allows the operator to check their finishing level
“To those who understand earthmoving and civil, they’ll think it looks awesome and tidy. We like to leave the job in the best condition we can. You can see how much work Mitch has done in the photo. There’s a massive amount of work there. And after that work has been done, it will be planted out.”
He says the civil construction industry is becoming increasingly high-tech, which will enable contractors to appeal to people like PC and console ‘gamers’, who can put their focus, strategic skills and technological understanding to good use in a career where talented excavator operators are needed.
Thanks to CCNZ and Contractor Magazine for sponsoring the EPIC prizes- Max has won himself a petrol voucher for his efforts.
Parting words from Jeremy Sole- a final column