Emerging Leader finalists

The future today

Z People Awards – Emerging Leader category finalists

Chris Ashton.......................McConnell Dowell and The Well-Connected Alliance for NZTA Brent Cations.....................City Care Construction Tom Harding-Ilott............Downer New Zealand

Chris Ashton

Chris has worked ‘from the ground up’ over the past 15 years in the construction industry to his current position as tunnel construction manager at the New Zealand Transport Agency’s Waterview Connection – the largest road infrastructure project in New Zealand.

He is a highly motivated and able tunnel construction manager with strong leadership skills and sound tunnelling, engineering and management experience on infrastructure projects of great scale.

He has recently been appointed to succeed Iain Simmons as construction manager, tunnels, Waterview Connection. This is a very senior position where Chris will implement a number of important regulatory changes. He will be responsible for a crew of over 200 people, for emergency incident management and for ongoing regulatory inspections of the tunnels.

Chris has earned a reputation as someone who is ready to take on those responsibilities as a true emerging leader in the industry.

Brent Cations

Brent works for City Care Construction as a project manager. In his time there, he has received support and training to develop the skills to deliver projects with great results, and he also trains teams to achieve these results too.

Brent has worked his way up to his role, which has given him a solid understanding of what it takes to get things done – including time and cost constraints. He uses this knowledge to lead crews and give clients confidence the job can be delivered. He makes sure all the right plans and tools are in place for the project to succeed. He also solves issues calmly, focusing on how they can go forward to fix the problem.

Within the City Care Civil Division he has been involved in creating the Water Enhancement Division. This started out as a two-man team four years ago, and now has multiple crews with a wide range of experience.

Tom Harding-Ilott

Tom joined the civil construction industry about five years ago. He is working in Downer New Zealand’s South Island Projects team where he started as a cadet and now is a site engineer.

He is currently seconded to Downer’s Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) to repair key infrastructure damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes. He has run his last three sites independently, being responsible for on site crews and subcontractors of up to 10 personnel.

Most recently, he led repairs of the Armagh Street Bridge, a historic 1883 bridge that suffered numerous large cracks. Prior to that he repaired the Dunbars Reservoir, a 3500m³ fresh water storage tank, and completed repairs to the four-lane Waltham Road Rail Bridge, a busy level-two bridge over KiwiRail lines.

Tom has aspirations of becoming a civil project manager within five years, working on large-scale civil projects.