Meet the Speakers
CEO
Volumetric Building Companies
Vaughan Buckley
Vaughan Buckley is a global business leader, sought after speaker, and entrepreneur. Vaughan founded Volumetric Building Companies in 2009 and has led its expansion into a global powerhouse in the industrialized construction industry over the past 14 years. More than $2B in projects have been constructed utilizing modules designed, manufactured or assembled under Vaughan’s direction. Vaughan recently led the team at Volumetric Building Companies through a series of successful acquisitions including a substantial portion of Katerra’s global assets, acquisition of the Polcom Group in Europe & the UK, the opening of an international centre of excellence for MMC to serve Irish, UK, European and global markets, and the purchase of the former Deluxe Modular factory in Berwick, Pennsylvania – creating one of the largest, vertically integrated volumetric construction technology companies in the world. Vaughan was also recently awarded EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2023.
Thomas Kaestner
Thomas is German carpenter and Civil Engineer. The last 18 years he worked in the New Zealand construction industry and has delivered several award winning timber buildings. Thomas primarily worked for main contractors and has accumulated significant experience in offsite manufactured mass and light timber structures. He is passionate about Lean Construction techniques and tirelessly works on improving the productivity of the local industry. Thomas now works for Hector Egger New Zealand in the heart of the South Island. The Swiss based company is a disruptor in the New Zealand construction market, delivering high performance offsite manufactured light timber framed structures for residential and commercial projects. Thomas has been their Operations Manager since the beginning and is passionate about the quality and precision of the Hector Egger solution.
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Operations Manager
Hector Egger New Zealand
Founder & Director
Higgs Building Co
Shaun Higgins
Shaun Higgins is the founder and Director of Higgs Building Co, a building company specialising in innovative building techniques for energy-efficient homes. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Shaun is a recognized leader in SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) construction and a certified Passive House Tradesperson.
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Under his leadership, Higggs Building Co has grown to a team of 10 staff, driven by a committment to quality, sustainability and innovation. Shaun's passion lies in finding better ways to construct energy-efficient homes while fostering a culture of teamwork and prioritising staff mental well-being.
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Catch Shaun Higgins at OffsiteNZ COLAB24 as he shares insights into sustainable building practices, team culture, and the future of energy-efficient construction.
Kim Aitken
What if we could supercharge the frame & truss industry and enable each of the 85+ NZ fabricators to become OSM suppliers, producing low-cost high performance building envelopes at speed and scale. Truss House™ is an advanced framing system manufactured under license by the frame & truss industry, with a combined capacity of 15,000 housing units annually. Truss House™ frame systems are engineered to construct buildings up to 3 stories high using the TH proprietary process.
As system designer and Truss House™ co-founder Kim leads with a strong belief that housing should be affordable, scalable, sustainable and of exceptional quality, she is a passionate and relentless advocate. Kim's background in specialist structural engineering and design underpins her deep domain expertise. Accompanying a robust technical foundation is an extensive knowledge of building science, intellectual property in construction, and a keen understanding of systems change. Kim is also an experienced consultant in the field of construction industry adaptation and transition, with a primary focus on productivity and decarbonization.
Founder
Truss House NZ
GM - Strategic Relationships
Precision Construction
Rob Moule
Rob is a Professional Engineer by degree with over twenty year’s strategic and operational achievement in engineering, business development, construction technology and innovation, business growth and strategy, property development and project management along with general management and leadership, both in New Zealand and overseas.
Rob has been working with Precision Construction Ltd (PCL) since 2013 to help successfully scale and diversify the business to the business it is today. Precision Construction currently operate in Auckland, Mangawhai and Whangarei; and have two main construction divisions catering to high end complex architectural homes; and also large scale Community Developments.
Rob has worked closely with the Community Developments division on many government and social projects; primarily on a Design and Build engagement that has enabled the Precision team to bring innovation to life through design. Innovation is a core value of Precisions founding Director (Grant) and thus there is a strong culture and focus for Innovation that is best bought to life through the preconstruction phases with innovative construction methodologies, materials and details. Rob believes that innovation requires active involvement in the preconstruction process along with a lot of “outside the norm” thinking, challenging the status quo and a lot of asking “why”.
Rob and the team from Precision Construction Ltd also have a strong culture of Continuous Improvement and look forward to bringing to life more innovations in future.
Gareth Jew
Gareth is an experienced structural engineer with a keen interest in all things related to Modern Methods of Construction (MMC). He has been involved in many MMC projects over the course of his career and have always enjoyed the challenge that innovation brings. Gareth is currently trying to bring his UK MMC experience to the New Zealand market to help address the lack of productivity improvement in the construction industry and change the way we build.
Senior Structural Engineer
WSP NZ
General Manager Projects & Advisory
DK Otto Ltd
Daiman Otto
Daiman has more than 20 years of experience in architecture, construction, development & innovation. Daiman founded DK Otto in 2011.
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Daiman has been involved in governance, as Board Chair of Offsite NZ, as an advisor to the Construction Sector Accord & Te Uru Rakau – New Zealand Forestry, & as a commercial research partner for a National Science Challenge 11 project.
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Daiman regularly speaks on podcasts, at conferences, companies & academic institutions across Australasia. In 2023, Daiman organised the Practical Innovation tour with Holmes, taking 24 people to companies & projects across San Francisco, Silicon & Central Valleys, then on to Portland to the International Mass Timber Conference.
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Daiman is a graduate of RMIT University Melbourne with a B.Arch Hons (1st Class), a recipient of the prestigious Anne Butler Memorial Prize, a finalist in the Australian Timber Design Awards 2015 (Small Budget Category) & has a Certificate for Engineering Design for a Circular Economy from TU Delft.
Gavin Norrington
Gavin Norrington is Design and Innovation Manager for A-Line Construction. Gavin is engaged by A-line to develop residential volumetric products to complement it’s successful education volumetric model, and to develop on-line compliance and quality management systems. Prior, Gavin developed systems for Clevercore including continuous improvement and manufacturing prototyping processes for a number of critical components.
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Gavin is passionate about innovation and problem solving with diverse industry experience in engineering, commercial construction, industrial and construction chemicals. His skill set is unique, enabling comprehensive evidence-backed solutions across a broad range of physical & digital products.
Design & Innovation Manager
A-Line Construction
CEO
Taranakipine & Woodspan Ltd
Tom Boon
Tom Boon has been part of the New Zealand forest industry for over 25 years. He joined Taranakipine in 2007 as CEO and shareholder after a long career within corporate forestry and wood processing companies in both NZ and Australia.
Originally starting his career as a forester, Tom, after a number of years, became interested in the conversion of the trees he was growing into high value finished wood products. This interest has not waned, and Tom now leads Taranakipine which specialises in the manufacturing and marketing of engineered timber building products sold locally and to export customers. The most recent venture is the development and launch of Woodspan Ltd which supplies mass-timber, off-site manufactured building systems directly to New Zealand's construction industry.
His ambition for a successful and durable NZ wood manufacturing industry has led him to be actively involved in several forestry and wood processing national organisations over the past 15 years.
Sharon Robinson
Sharon is the Designer and Director at Smart Living Spaces. Architectural Design with People and Planet in Mind.
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She is focused on focused on Healthy, Comfortable Low Energy Homes and is passionate about sustainable and smart Architecture. With over 20 years experience in Architecture, she is also a Certified Passive House Designer with Passivhaus Institute and Homestar Designer and Assessor with the New Zealand Green Building Council. She is also currently working with Offsite NZ and Sector Accord to assist the Offsite space get Building for Climate Change ready for 2030.
“Einstein said, the height of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. However I think we are at a time of such rapid change in all aspects of life, that I modified it. The height of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. As the world shifts its gears to embrace change around doing better and climate change, we all have a choice, be the change, chase the change or get left behind by the change.”
Designer & Director
Smart Living Spaces
CEO
Taranakipine & Woodspan Ltd
CEO
EasyBuild
Scott Matthews
Scott Matthews joined EasyBuild in 2020 with the aim of supporting Easy Build’s continued growth around New Zealand. Since joining EasyBuild Scott has set up and grown the EasyBuild factory, doubling production space within one year to support their continued growth, and grown their licensee network substantially, making EasyBuild’s warm, energy efficient homes available in more regions across Aotearoa.
Scott spearheads EasyBuild’s social housing strategy and facilitates engagement, providing invaluable support to their licensees throughout New Zealand on pivotal projects. Additionally, he nurtures their growth by assisting them in operating their businesses with professionalism and efficiency.
Previously, Scott led Master Build Services, which manages Master Build Guarantees. Scott achieved considerable growth during his three years at Master Build Services by successfully engaging with the membership and developing new products and services.
Prior to this he spent seven years as Head of Shared Services at NZ customer owned bank, The Co-operative Bank, giving Scott has extensive experience in risk, finance and operations.
Director
Mainstream Green
After spending the first 15 years of her career understanding shopper behaviour in the global consumer goods industry, Nicola Turner's life was set on a different trajectory with a personal quest to live more simply and sustainably.
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Now, the renowned speaker, best-selling author and founder of Mainstream Green, is on a mission to make sustainability easy, normal, and feel good. Leveraging her sustainability experience and her corporate insights and understanding of human behaviour, Nic works with people, organisations and communities to create behaviour change. In practical and achievable ways, she helps kickstart and inspire people no matter where they are on their sustainability journey.
Nicola Turner
CEO
EasyBuild
Founder
Apex Wiring Solutions
Simon Waldren
Hi there, I am Simon, and my passion and expertise is in Modular Wiring Systems and Solutions. I believed in this so much that I chose to move all my family over from the UK in 2012 to set up my business bringing these systems and products to the market here and in Australia.
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I particularly love being part of the advancement of the industry through activity and doing rather than just talk. Since moving over from the UK, I have dedicated my efforts to introducing the application of this technology in the construction industry, with varying degrees of success. Our team has delivered success in our key focus industry sectors and markets, we all enjoy learning from each and every experience that we have on our journey.
I am more than happy to talk about the upsides and the downsides of our experiences openly. I will give an honest insight of our modular journey and how it is succeeding whilst being bashed, criticised, attacked, knocked, and supressed by mainstream and some of the competition. You know you are doing something right when you are being attacked so obviously and consistently by competitors, haters, and conventional industry stalwarts.
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We need to be disruptive to challenge norms and help bring about changes.
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I look forward to being at COLAB24 in Auckland and listening to some industry changing people talk on their journeys and experiences.