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Brian Souness during his last day on the job at Engineering Taranaki Consortium.

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Brian Souness, for the past decade the public face of Taranaki's engineering sector, finished work on Friday - to take up a new job as a business director. Rob Maetzig reports.

If you've spent the last 10 years championing Taranaki's engineering capability and capacity, it's highly unlikely you're going to walk away from either the industry or the region. This is the case with Brian Souness.

On Friday he finished his role as chief executive of Engineering Taranaki Consortium, and on Wednesday he begins a new job as business director with engineering consultancy Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner.

The distance between his old office and his new one is so short it represents about a two-minute walk. And it could be said the job is reasonably similar too. It's just that instead of championing the cause of Taranaki's entire engineering sector, Brian Souness will be furthering the business of a single company.

But even though this is a case of taking the man out of the consortium, it's obvious you can't take the consortium out of the man - because one of the first things Brian would like to see is his new employer become part of Engineering Taranaki.

"Beca isn't formally a member of ET, but it may be soon. I'd love to maintain an involvement with the consortium," he said on Friday.

Brian Souness is a Scot who emigrated to Taranaki 13 years ago after a career in mechanical engineering and business management with British Gas.

He and his wife had visited the region on holiday to meet up with a cousin who worked on the Maui project. They loved the lifestyle Taranaki offered, and decided to emigrate.

Brian's first job was as business services manager with Wells Instrument and Electrical. It wasn't long before he became involved in a move by the region's economic development agency Venture Taranaki to form an engineering "cluster" that would take a collaborative approach to winning and completing engineering contracts in New Zealand and overseas.

VT contacted close to 60 individual companies in the region to ascertain support for the concept.

This was whittled down to a dozen organisations that were keen - and in 2000 they formed the Engineering Taranaki Consortium, with Mr Souness the first chief executive.

"These companies were all owned and run by people with like minds, who saw the potential for the region's engineering sector taking a collaborative approach to tendering for future contracts," he said.

"And it's worked. In fact of the current member companies, eight are founding members and the other three have been of the consortium for a number of years."

Brian Souness can reel off numerous successes the consortium has achieved over the past decade.

Projects that have succeeded thanks to the collaborative approach include the quick installation of lights at Yarrow Stadium in New Plymouth, building of the "super screen" used at various sporting and other events, and involvement in a nickel mine project in New Caledonia.

"But for me, two of our major successes have been development of the Taranaki HSE Centre which offers health and safety training for industry, and heavy involvement in the establishment of the New Plymouth-headquartered International Centre of Engineering Excellence - CapENZ - in conjunction with Witt.

"Both of those are fantastic achievements that underline the value both of Venture Taranaki and Engineering Taranaki Consortium."

Mr Souness says the future of Taranaki's engineering sector is sound.

"In engineering terms Taranaki has always had a project-driven economy, and in that regard the region has been a little cocooned from the effects of the recession. Things are a little flat right now, and this is where the value of collaboration will kick in.

"There are a lot of projects coming up, but they are not necessarily in Taranaki. For example, things are about the explode in the engineering sector in Australia. In Queensland alone there will be hundreds of billions of dollars spent on various mining projects in the next 18 months, which we can be part of."

It's going to be important for Taranaki's engineering sector to fill in low periods by being active in various offshore projects, he said, because this way the region can maintain its capacity and capability.

- © Fairfax NZ News