Community ownership of Engineering

Under full community ownership, a new name and a new manager, it’s business as usual at Queenstown Lakes District Council’s engineering service delivery organisation.


“The change of ownership is complete and the engineering service, is now officially a Council Controlled Organisation or CCO,” QLDC finance general manager Stewart Burns said.


The council assumed full ownership of the engineering company Alpine Infrastructure Management, operating as QLDC Engineering, in July 2007. The 80% share was purchased for $1.4m; the council already owned the remaining 20%. The council consulted with the community over the establishment of a CCO to operate the company during the Annual Plan process.


As with the Lakes Environmental CCO, the new engineering organisation would be administered by a board, which included Stewart Burns as an interim director, engineer James Hadley and Trevor Tattersfield (chairman).


“I am delighted to announce that the organisation will now assume a new operating name of Lakes Engineering Limited,” Mr Tattersfield said.


“We are deliberately aligning the branding of our CCO’s with the council in order to help the community to understand that these service organisations are community owned, non-profit bodies,” Mr Burns said.


Lakes Engineering would also feature a new general manager at the helm.


“We have appointed Blair King from the Far North District Council to the position, which he will take up at the end of the month. Mr King brings a wealth of engineering knowledge and will be a real asset to engineering resources in the district,” Mr Tattersfield said.


The ‘new-look’ team was looking forward to continuing to provide quality ‘in house’ engineering support to the council,” Mr Tattersfield said.


Lakes Engineering is responsible for providing engineering advice to council, management of the roading and utilities network maintenance programmes, and project management of selected capital projects.


ENDS