Business North October 2021

| 27 Haigh Workman The $130 million Arvida Retirement Home, in Kerikeri. “We’re a locally-owned business and we feel very much a part of the community....” REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Mark: 027 250 0096 | 09 401 6247 | E: keriland@xtra.co.nz Section Clearing, Footings, Sewer & Drainage, House Sites, Roading, Farm & General, Supply & Deliver Metal, Sand & Topsoil Etc. 3-14 Tonne Diggers Tip Trucks 4 & 6 Wheel Truck & Trailer Stick Raking Bobcat Rollers “We really enjoy working on this sort of project because we get to use the whole range of our resources,” John Papesch says. No less busy is the Warkworth office which spends about a third of its time on local authority work, a third on the sub-division and development sector, and a third on housing. A key project the company. has under way is the design of flood prevention and resil- ience infrastructure near Moerewa for the Northland Regional Council, which will see the overflow from one flood-prone river catch- ment directed into another as the need arises. Other work includes the $13 million Paihia Waterfront development, one of several pro- jects the firm is involved in that are funded by the Provincial Growth Fund. The Warkworth office is also working on several sub-divisions in the area in the 20-50 lot range, and on the engineering involved in house-building. “We’re very busy, and the critical thing is to find the right people to attract to, or bring back to or just keep in Northland, because we don’t have an aggressive recruitment strategy and engineers are hard to find,” John says. Necessity, though, is the mother of recruit- ment invention, and Haigh Workman has lately taken on a mechanical engineer and is transitioning him into a civil one, and it’s also sponsoring a student in his final year at Waikato University on the condition that he comes and works for the firm next year.