N E W S
10 October 2018
Engineering feat: Massey students head
damaged seawall repair
Massey University engineering students
have teamed up with one of their lecturers
to develop a real-time sensor for a
damaged seawall in Auckland.
Last August, Auckland Transport had
discovered damage to a seawall under
the historic Auckland Ferry Building. The
major scouring, thought to have been
caused by propeller wash from ferries,
needed urgent attention.
Auckland Transport moved to fix the
issue, but they needed to continuously
monitor the wall for potential movement
while divers undertook repairs. This was
necessary for the safety of the divers
and people within the ferry building itself,
however they didn’t have the technology
themselves. While such a solution could
be ordered, it was weeks away.
Senior lecturer in computer engineering
Dr Fakhrul Alam was approached by
Auckland Transport to see if he could
come up with a solution.
“We went down to take a look and
saw that their method for monitoring
involved manual measurements being
taken daily,” Dr Alam says. “As these
were taken at different times they could
be influenced by the tide, time of day,
and temperature; ultimately making the
information inaccurate and too slow to
act on if the wall started to move. They
needed real-time, but they didn’t have
the technology to implement real-time
monitoring on-hand.
“We saw that the sensors needed to
potentially exist underwater, which
meant waterproofing, and there was no
good access for power. Our expertise
is mainly in robotics not infrastructure,
but I thought that we could give it a go,
although we didn’t make any promises,”
he says.
To help him with the project, Dr Alam
enlisted fourth-year Bachelor of Engineering
(hons) student Baden Parr and
PhD student Daniel Konings to do the
work under his supervision.
“This required developing a complete
end-to-end solution,” Dr Alam says.
“Due to the urgent nature of the repairs,
a solution was required to be ready
for deployment within two weeks. The
time pressure meant the team couldn’t
source materials from overseas and had
to use what they had on hand or could
attain locally.
“There were a lot of technological
problems we needed solutions for – a
combination of wireless telecommunication,
electronics, signal processing,
database and web development, and
machine learning.”
Parents
urged to
take trades
seriously
Parents and teachers of school leavers
need to start taking careers in trades
seriously as teens are missing out on
genuine opportunities to avoid student
loans and get ahead.
Fiona Kingsford, chief executive of industry
training organisation Competenz,
says while around 60,000 teenagers
leave school each year, just 4% of them
go straight into trades training.
“We need to triple that. More than half of
New Zealand’s apprentices and trainees
have already been to university or another
tertiary institute and many of them have
clocked up student debt. But they could
have avoided that debt altogether and
started an apprenticeship straight away.
“Research shows that because apprentices
start earning earlier, they can buy
a house earlier and pay off a mortgage
earlier, which puts them financially ahead
of university graduates for most of their
working lives, and at about the same
financial position when they’re ready
to retire.
“Our mission is to educate not only school
leavers about their opportunities, but also
their parents and careers advisers too.”
Competenz works with apprentices and
trainees across 36 sectors including
mechanical engineering, one of New
Zealand’s biggest growth areas.
Ms Kingsford says: “Infometrics data
shows that we’ll need 5,500 more workers
in the mechanical engineering sector
between now and 2022 to fill new jobs
and replace workers who retire or leave.
That’s just one sector, and with such a
small number of school leavers going into
the trades, employers are all competing
for the same pool of people.
“We need to get more school leavers
into trades now, or the skills shortage
will only get worse.
“A lot of the decision-making is aided
by parents and family members and a
lot of the time it's what mum and dad
know of those industries. But we need
our young people to be aware of all the
opportunities out there.”
Genuine opportunities
Competenz works closely with
Apprentice Training New Zealand
(ATNZ), the country’s largest
employer of mechanical engineering
apprentices. “ATNZ has recruited 105
apprentices this year, and still has
another 50 apprenticeship vacancies
Engineer Tautalafua Mata’afa
to fill across the country. “Auckland
employs one third of mechanical
engineers, and coupled with strong
future population growth, the region
still holds good prospects for those
entering the sector. That said, rents
and house prices are sky rocketing
in Auckland, so working in smaller
regions allows people to easily
relocate and enjoy a higher quality of
life. “There are genuine opportunities
throughout the country.”
Cost me five grand
Maintenance engineer Tautalafua Mata’afa
went to university when he left school,
but it was a costly mistake.
“I went to uni for one semester after
high school and that cost me five grand.
That’s when I realised I wasn’t really into
just studying, I was more into practical
work and working with tools.”
He spent the next few years as a labourer
in various sectors in New Zealand and
Australia before starting an ATNZ apprenticeship
in maintenance engineering
at Pacific Steel in Auckland. He’s now a
qualified tradesman working at Steelpipe
in Onehunga.
Kiwi construction
machinery
technician is
region’s best
Wellington technician Levi
Webster has won the 2018
Hitachi Top Technician Asia
Pacific regional final and will now
compete in the world final in
October.
Levi represented CablePrice (NZ)
Ltd at the recent competition in
Singapore. He will now represent
both CablePrice and Hitachi
Construction Machinery Asia &
Pacific (HMAP) at the world final
in Japan on October 10 and 11th.
CablePrice is the New Zealand
distributor and technical
support for Hitachi construction
machinery. It has a proud history
in the 11 years the Asia Pacific
competition has been running,
with its technicians qualifying for
the world final seven times and
winning twice.
During this year’s competition,
Levi was up against five other
technicians including, for the
first time, representatives from
Myanmar and the Philippines. The
event was based around Hitachi’s
ZX200-5G range of excavators.
On the first day, competitors were
presented with faulty machines
and had 90 minutes to diagnose,
repair their machine and offer
solutions to ensure minimum
downtime. Levi was the only
technician to complete this
task and had to cope with the
challenging conditions of 35˚C
and 100% humidity.
The second day was devoted to
machinery theory and again Levi
performed extremely well, despite
only working for CablePrice for
five years. He was named the
winner of the HMAP Regional
Final for Hitachi Top Technician at
a prize giving event that evening
and is now preparing for the final
in Tokyo.
“We are very proud of Levi and
excited about his opportunity to
go to Japan. The Asia Pacific win
is great recognition of how hard
Levi has worked and prepared and
his real commitment to his trade,”
says James Magill, CablePrice
Wellington operations manager.
ATNZ has recruited
105 apprentices
this year, and still
has another 50
apprenticeship
vacancies to fill
across the country.