Shay is an Associate Director and the Hydraulic Section Head in our Auckland office.
He believes in a proactive approach to both design and problem solving and has over 20 years of experience in designing and coordinating hydraulic systems for a wide range of projects. These include commercial, institutional, industrial and residential applications and range from sports arenas, high- and low-rise apartment buildings, office buildings, hotels, and retail developments to hospitals, aged care facilities and medical facilities.
Shay took some time out from his busy day to talk about engineering as a career choice, the advances brought about by environmentally sustainable design and his work on the innovative Star Mountain Plaza hotel and convention centre in Papua New Guinea.
What inspired you to become an engineer?
I was always interested in how things were built and how they worked, from cars to planes to buildings. When I started thinking about a career during high school the internal workings of different types of buildings and how they are designed, constructed and built started to interest me more and more which made engineering an easy and obvious choice.
Why hydraulics engineering?
I ended up in hydraulic engineering almost by accident. I started my first job while still studying and always looked at it as temporary until I graduated. I really enjoyed the work we were doing and figured out that it was a great environment to learn in with great people to work with, and that laid the foundation for the rest of my career.
What’s your career highlight project?
The Star Mountain Plaza Stage 1 is a hotel and convention centre with a free standing car park and included a central services area and site mains reticulation in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG). With a project value of approximately NZ$650 million, it was constructed to be the venue for the 2018 APEC conference before entering normal operation.
Tell us about the hydraulics engineering on this project.
The Star Mountain Project required a different approach due to the instability of the local infrastructure network that services the development, and the lack of skilled labour available locally.
We needed to ensure that the development could continue operating when the infrastructure services were offline (which happens regularly) and make the systems as easy to install and maintain as possible. This involved the design of a central services area for water supply (3 x 250 m³ storage tanks), power (3 x containerised generator sets) and LPG supply (2 x bulk LPG tanks) and the site reticulation to deliver these to the different buildings on site.
What innovative new approaches are you seeing when it comes to hydraulics engineering?
Hydraulic services design hasn’t generally been a very innovative discipline in the past being more focused on delivering functional systems based on a tried and tested set of standards and design principles. Those design principles are still relevant but there have been a lot of advances in environmentally sustainable design and the use of systems that use renewal resources to replace systems that traditionally relied on fossil fuels, most notably the phasing out of natural gas as an energy source in recent times.
If you’ve worked across regions or countries, and/or across Tetra Tech operating units, can you tell us about the key similarities and differences you’ve encountered when it comes to hydraulics engineering and your projects?
I have worked in the Auckland Office for my entire 18 years with NDY but I’ve had the opportunity to work on multiple projects in PNG and a hotel development in Fiji. I’ve also worked out of the NDY offices in Melbourne and Brisbane to assist with projects there.
What legacy do you want to leave, when it comes to your career?
Mentoring young engineers has always been something that I have enjoyed and with the lack of experienced engineers available the best way to grow the industry was by taking on graduate engineers and developing them. Helping young engineers start their careers and taking the time to teach them has been the most fulfilling part of my career so far and will continue to be.
