Lord of the ring road

Hamilton’s Wairere Drive roundabout looks chaotic. There is an abundance of fluorescent cones, dust billowing from heavy machinery and traffic as far as the eye can see – the drivers are impatient and it seems that road rules have been discarded, along with rationality.

But you can see a look of fatherly pride on Iain Fletcher’s face when he surveys the developing road. He sees the bigger picture. Iain Fletcher has a connection to this project and so, he says, do his team.

Iain Fletcher is the project manager for the Hamilton ring road project.

This project is the Hamilton City Council’s single biggest contract. Ever. Coming in with a budget of $105 million, including design fees and the like, it surpasses the City Heart revamp, Claudelands Event Centre and the infamous V8s.

Downer is responsible for a $70 million slice of this enormous asphalt pie, and Fletcher is responsible for making sure the council doesn’t spend a cent more than that.

“I kind of see it as my baby. But everyone here does. Everybody has adopted this as ‘theirs’. We feel as if we own it as much as the council,” he says.

“I’m responsible, as far as the contract goes at Downer, for making sure the whole job works.

“That means we’ve got to build it to quality, build it on time, build it within budget, keep everybody safe. Within all that it gets a bit more complicated.”

The project began in January 2011 and Fletcher has been managing the project since February 2011.

“We’re working with a really good client, the Hamilton City Council; they have been good to work with.

“It’s a good job to work on, to be honest.  I’ve worked on some other ones that have been hard but this one’s good.”

You’ll find him in the office most days but when he gets on site, Fletcher is a buddy to everyone. After explaining the importance of health and safety, he calls out to one of his team not wearing a hard hat.

The team member fires a grin at Fletcher who light-heartedly quips “He won’t be back tomorrow”, and then lets out his hearty Scottish laugh.

And although he jokes around with the team, when there are deadlines and budgets to meet – then it’s pressure time, he says.

“There’s obviously a budget to work to. I know, I set the thing, and it’s really my job to make sure it comes under that budget. The same with the programme with deadlines, you know if this bit of the jobs got to be open by three weeks’ time, it’s me that puts the pressure on myself as much as everybody else to make sure it does.”

Roading was not exactly Fletcher’s chosen career path. He studied mechanical engineering in Glasgow before realising there were no jobs in that area.

“I couldn’t even get an interview back in Scotland.  So I couldn’t get a job in that and I had to pay the student loan, had to buy beer and stuff so I had to get a job.”

And that job involved intense labouring. Carting wheelbarrows of cement around, hauling bricks around for the builders. Fletcher says he was a “dog’s body. Bottom of the ladder.”

But hard work and determination eventually led him to where he wanted to be. He gained a job as a foreman, then a supervisor, and says he was almost like a project engineer when he emigrated to New Zealand.

Faced with the same dilemma, with lack of work for a mechanical engineer in New Zealand, Fletcher decided to stick with roading.

He gained a NZCE (New Zealand Certificate of Engineering) over four years while working for the Waipa District Council, and then headed back to contracting.

A reminiscent smile stretches gradually across his face before he declares: “By that stage it was a boyhood dream.”

In his nine years of working for Downer, and particularly with the ring road project, Fletcher says the biggest thing he has learnt is the importance of a good team.

“Technically I haven’t really learned anything because I kind of knew all that stuff already. Having a team around you, I knew all that before ’cause I’ve managed bigger teams than what I’ve got here. But when you’ve actually got a team where every single person is really good and really willing to do their job, you know they’ll go that extra mile and it makes the job so much easier.

“A lot of them travel from Auckland every single day here. And back up. They don’t get bored with it, you know. They still want to do it every day.

“There’s been some real challenging days, weeks, but it doesn’t put people off.

“That’s been the main thing for me – the importance of having a good team around.”