“We like to get involved at the early stages of a design project to try and optimise the design direction to the benefit of our client.”
Steve came to New Zealand from South Africa where he was a project engineer with a strong background in new 275/132/33/11 kV substation installation and hands-on commissioning.
Since joining Beca in 1994, Steve has played a significant role in establishing Beca Power in New Zealand as well as its expansion into Australia. As Technical Director for Beca Power in Auckland, Steve’s main focus is guiding the direction and technical development of the Beca power systems team. His strength is in problem solving and he most enjoys feasibility studies where the best solution is not immediately obvious.
With a solid background in upgrade projects for Transpower, the team was challenged with its expansion into Victoria to convert the New Zealand technical designs; using a very different philosophy. Steve feels the team learned a lot from about the merits of each philosophy with this exercise and says the knowledge “has been passed on to our clients in both directions”.
A highlight of Steve's career was as lead primary designer on the Rowville 500kV Extension Project in Melbourne.
Steve has thoroughly enjoyed acting as mentor to some of the younger, enthusiastic engineers in the team. To Steve, one of the major successes of the past few years has been the growth of many junior engineers into very competent designers.