10 |
September 2016 Business South
ENGINEERING » Action Engineering 25 Years
Engineering firm stands test of time Kelly Deeks Now celebrating the completion of 25 years in business, the team at Dunedin’s Action Engineering are very proud of the extensive range of services they have to offer. Services include infrastructure projects, such as water and waste water treatment plants, structural steel fabrication and erection, ship repair, road transport engineering and general engineering. Founding director Mark Cameron completed his trade certificate in fitting, turning, and machining before starting out as an engineering contractor at 21 years old. With the support and assistance of his parents Barry and Sandra, he started Action Engineering in 1991, at the age of 23. Some of the first work Mark secured was for AgResearch at Invermay, where Action Engineering built pilot plants to turn laboratory trials into full scale treatment processes. “It was one of those very fortunate times in life,” he says. “I was very interested and what they were doing, I was young, and really keen to help them.” Two years in, Dave Crosland joined Action Engineering and really invigorated the business and helped it to grow. He became a shareholder and director in 1996. “We gradually got up to five or six staff, and in the mid 1990’s we moved premises for the first and only time to our current building,” Mark says. “We bought the workshop and we’ve since extended it several times, to now 4500sqm. We took over two buildings beside us, our last expansion being about two years ago when we set up a new structural steel department.” He says to compliment the experimental and pilot-plant work it was undertaking, Action Engineering started to look at the water and wastewater industry, and won a game changer project with the mechanical and electrical works for the Mt Grand water treatment plant in Dunedin around the turn of the century. “It was a really large project for us in terms of the size of the job and also the responsibility we had,” he says. “The next major project for us was the build of a water treatment plant in Nelson, where we worked in conjunction with Fulton Hogan. It was a particularly complex project using membrane cassette technology to purify three different water sources.” The project was a success due to the team collaborating to come up with solutions. “We were all totally committed to it, and we wanted it to work,” Mark says.
A dedicated structural steel workshop means Action Engineering can create and deliver quality steel work.
“We were motivated young guys and we wanted our clients to succeed.” By 2009, Action Engineering had identified capacity and quality issues in the structural steel industry, and was encouraged by clients to open a new workshop to service the building and construction sector. As an example of its continued commitment to quality, Action Engineering recently joined a select group of 20 New Zealand engineering companies who hold externally audited Steel Fabricator Certification to ISO 3834. The scheme provides clients and designers with greater certainty of product quality, and the knowledge they are dealing with a fabricator
• • • • •
Transport Marine Structural Project Engineering
“We were all totally committed to it, and we wanted it to work. We were motivated young guys and we wanted our clients to succeed.”
who has both the procedures and personnel to represent international best practice. Steel Fabricator Certification has been developed by the Heavy Engineering Research Association (HERA), and Steel Construction New Zealand (SCNZ).
PP
The scheme is based on the European system, which is the only mandatory structural steel system internationally. The focus of the scheme is on quality assurance, and the reduction of risk for clients and designers. • to page 14
PRECISION PROFILE LTD P L AT E
C U T T I N G
S E R V I C E
Suppliers of precision cut plate components
PP
Proud to support Action Engineering
Proud to be celebrating 25 years of business 95 Fryatt Street, Dunedin 9016 P: 03 477 1643 E: info@action.net.nz
www.action.net.nz
12 Birch Street, Dunedin PO Box 2365, South Dunedin Tel: (03) 477 7277 Fax: (03) 477 7018 Email: precisionprofile@clear.net.nz
LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED
Phone: 03 983 5500 Fax: 03 983 5552
www.waterfordpress.co.nz