Former UC student named NZ’s young engineer of the year

Former UC student named NZ’s young engineer of the year

A former University of Canterbury (UC) student has been named New Zealand’s young engineer of the year.

Ben Hayward, who works for Fulton Hogan in Christchurch, received the award tonight at the New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards gala dinner in Auckland.

The award recognises the achievements of a young engineer who has contributed significantly not only to the engineering profession, but also to the wider community.

Hayward recently worked on a $115million Christchurch motorway project and was promoted to construction manager as the project progressed from design to construction.

This big project was completed on time, to budget and with an exemplary safety record. This achievement is all the more remarkable given the need to split the project to free staff for urgent work associated with the Christchurch earthquakes.

A chartered professional engineer, Hayward received a masters degree at UC and has been with Fulton Hogan since 2004.

UC lecturer Dr Mofreh Saleh tutored Hayward in 2004 during a pavement engineering course. Dr Saleh said Hayward did his honours project under his supervision.

``He did quite well in the both the pavement course and in his honour project and he received an A in the course and he was ranked the second in his pavement class. I found him quite diligent and was a self-motivated student.’’

Award judge Laurence Zwimpfer said they gave the award to Hayward because they wanted someone `who was a role model for other young engineers’.

Hayward’s communication experience was put to the test in October as the four young engineer of the year finalists were required to make project presentations to a crowd of more than 70 fellow engineers in Auckland. Audience members voted anonymously for the best presentation and the scores were added to the final tally.

Three of the four finalists were UC alumni and two of them are currently working in Christchurch – Hayward and Matthew Bishop. The other UC graduate in the finals was Gina Waibl.

Bishop founded his Christchurch mechanical engineering consultancy BVT Mechanical Engineering in 2009. He is heavily involved with the Christchurch rebuild, including contributing to the structural design for the new AMI Stadium, lifting, demolition and drainage.

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