Introducing our COLAB26 Speakers
Alana Reid
Alana Reid joined the Ministry of Education in 2019 and currently serves as Programme Manager for the Offsite Manufactured Building Programme. Over the past few years, she has led the development of a strategic approach to integrating offsite manufacturing (OSM) into the Ministry’s business-as-usual property operations. Her work has been influential in shaping how innovative construction methods are adopted across the Ministry’s portfolio.
Prior to joining the Ministry, Alana held a range of commercial advisory roles across both Christchurch and Wellington, bringing a strong background in strategic planning and stakeholder engagement to her current position.
OMB Programme Manager – National Programmes
School Property
Ministry of Education
Ben Drake
In addition to serving as Deputy Chair of OffsiteNZ, Ben Drake is a Senior Leader at Frequency, where he provides strategic advice to a range of clients across the offsite and modular construction sector, including the Ministry of Education. Before moving into advisory and leadership roles, Ben spent many years “on the tools” designing large-scale modular buildings around the world as a structural engineer.
Senior Leader
Frequency
Damien Crough
Damien Crough is a recognised leader and advocate for Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) in Australia. As Co-founder and Executive Chairman of prefabAUS, Damien has been instrumental in positioning the organisation as the national peak body for offsite construction. Under his leadership, prefabAUS has grown from a grassroots initiative into a respected and influential voice shaping policy, driving research, and fostering collaboration across government, industry, and academia.
Executive Chairman
prefabAUS
Dan McNelis
Dan McNelis is the Director of MADE and Interim Chief Executive of OffsiteNZ, and a leading advocate for advancing offsite construction in Aotearoa.
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With 20 years' experience across leading Aotearoa practices, Dan brings a rare blend of design leadership, technical knowledge and delivery expertise. His work spans some of New Zealand's most significant OSM developments, as well as extensive experience in multi-unit residential, retirement, healthcare, hospitality and iwi-led projects.
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Dan is known for bringing together architecture, offsite manufacturing and industry advocacy to accelerate the adoption of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) across New Zealand. As Interim Chief Executive of OffsiteNZ, he has led the sector's engagement with government and driven the case for offsite construction ahead of the 2026 General Election. He is a current Board member of OffsiteNZ and a member of PCNZ's Build to Rent Taskforce.
At COLAB26, Dan will present the OffsiteNZ Offsite Construction Roadmap 2026–2036, the sector's first comprehensive strategy for scaling offsite and modern methods of construction across New Zealand's housing, health, education and Defence pipelines.
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Director | Interim CEO
MADE | OffsiteNZ
Founder | Director
Inspira Ltd
Janine van Leeuwen
Janine van Leeuwen is the Founder and Director of Inspira, a specialist advisory practice helping government and industry turn complex infrastructure, housing and Modern Methods of Construction programmes into projects that can actually be delivered.
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With more than 25 years’ experience across New Zealand and internationally, Janine works at the front end of projects — where the big decisions are made, risks are shaped and the right delivery conditions need to be created. Her expertise spans project initiation, programme strategy, governance, modular construction, DfMA, procurement, consenting, and compliance.
Janine is a strong advocate for offsite construction, but not as a standalone solution or simply another way to build. She sees MMC as part of a much bigger delivery system — one that brings together standardised design, manufacturing, procurement, consenting, data and programme thinking to create faster, smarter and more predictable outcomes.
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.
Principal Structural Engineer and National MMC Lead
WSP NZ
Jimmy Corric
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With over 20 years in the industry, Jimmy Corric has built a career around doing things smarter. He’s led some of Aotearoa’s most complex prefabricated and modular builds — from Air New Zealand’s Hangar 4 to the Elam Hall student accommodation project, then the largest prefabricated building in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Earlier in his career with Stanley Construction, Jimmy helped pioneer modular delivery solutions across multiple sectors, shaping the systems that drive his work today. Now at NZ Strong, he champions sustainable, off-site, and DfMA-led approaches that make construction faster, safer, and more predictable.
Pre-Construction & Innovation Manager
NZ Strong Group
Karin Speight
Karin Speight is a Principal Geotechnical Engineer, Sector Lead for Land Development at Tonkin + Taylor, and a passionate advocate for smarter, more resilient housing delivery.
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With nearly 20 years of experience across New Zealand and the Pacific, Karin specialises in helping clients identify development opportunities early, reduce risk, and make better investment decisions. Her work spans social housing, education, commercial developments, infrastructure and large-scale land development projects.
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Karin is known for bringing together geotechnical engineering, planning, infrastructure, environmental and commercial considerations to unlock challenging development sites and accelerate project delivery. She has played key leadership roles on major housing programmes, helping streamline design and consenting processes and improve delivery certainty.
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As an engineer with a strong interest in innovation and digital enablement, Karin is passionate about finding practical ways to deliver more housing, more efficiently. At COLAB26, she will share insights from real projects on how early feasibility assessments and smarter foundation solutions can improve resilience, reduce cost and support scalable housing delivery across New Zealand.
Principal Geotechnical Engineer, Sector Lead for Land Development
Tonkin & Taylor
Kishan Seger
Kishan was responsible for tendering the modular IIU programme and getting the project to contract execution. He leads the design across all the IIU projects for Southbase.
Drawing on his background as a chartered structural engineer he drove the development of the design scheme for the project, working collaboratively with Max.
Technical Director
Southbase
Deputy Director & Chief Economist
John Curtin Research Centre (Australia)
Lachlan Kerwood-McCall
Lachlan Kerwood-McCall is Deputy Director and Chief Economist at the John Curtin Research Centre and a Scholar Associate at the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis at the Australian National University. He holds a Master of International and Development Economics from ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy and a Master of International Relations from the University of Melbourne, where he completed his BA in Politics and International Studies.
He previously served as Senior Economist at the Australian Council of Trade Unions and has worked as an economist at the Australian Treasury, the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, DFAT, the Department of Industry, and the Department of Employment & Workplace Relations.
Leah Singer
Leah Singer is Head of Supply Chain and Head of Procurement at Building 4.0, where she is working to establish the supply chain required to support a new national approach to housing delivery.
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Leah brings extensive experience across the construction industry supply chain, having worked with government agencies, developers, contractors, consultants, manufacturers and industry organisations in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Her experience spans complex project delivery, design management, procurement, supply chain development and offsite projects. With a deep connection to New Zealand, Leah is a past Chair of OffsiteNZ and author of the seminal New Zealand report on government procurement - the entwine report - which informed the New Zealand Construction Accord.
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At Building 4.0, Leah is working on the National Housing Platform, a government-backed program focused on establishing a coordinated national approach to housing delivery via a kit-of-parts solution called System 600. Her role includes identifying, attracting and onboarding suppliers - with a particular focus on manufacturers - as well as working with government on the procurement strategies required to support the platform.
Head of Supply Chain
Head of Procurement
Building 4.0
Marty Verry
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Since its inception in 2023 the Red Stag group has established an integrated forestry, wood processing, construction and property development supply chain. It has 4,000 ha of redwood and radiata forestry, operates the Southern Hemisphere’s largest sawmill producing 700,000m3 of timber annually, runs New Zealand’s only CLT factory, and is the one-stop-shop for mass timber solutions for more than half of New Zealand’s projects.
In August it also launched VoMo, its volumetric modular platform factory in Rotorua, using CLT and a proven European system for manufacture and delivery.
Marty will share views on focus areas and points of difference for VoMo, as well as off-site’s value proposition.
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CEO
Red Stag Group
Max Labarriere
Max Labarriere is an off-site manufacturing specialist with over a decade of experience in timber construction, volumetric modular, and prefabricated building systems. He previously ran Southbase’s Innofab factory prior to joining Southbase.
He works collaboratively with Kishan integrating factory production requirements, transport, logistics and craneage.
Offsite-Manufacturing Technical Advisor
Southbase
Rayno Potgieter
Rayno Potgieter is a Director of Nemean Ltd and oversees the operational delivery of the business's civil, geotechnical, and structural engineering services. Having been involved in more than 100 off-site and modular building projects, he has seen first-hand how poor feasibility information and early-stage uncertainty drive cost, delays, and redesign throughout delivery.
His focus is on simplifying complex decisions, improving project certainty, and creating processes that allow better decisions to be made earlier. Together with Steffan, he has helped develop tools and workflows aimed at reducing pre-construction waste and improving feasibility outcomes, bringing a practical delivery perspective to the modular conversation at COLAB26.
Director
Nemean Ltd
Simon Trotter
Simon Trotter is the National Head of Delivery within Health New Zealand’s Infrastructure and Investment Group, overseeing the delivery of major hospital infrastructure projects & programmes across the country. He plays a key role in shaping national procurement and delivery strategies under the Building Hospitals Better approach, with a focus on standardisation, staged delivery and long-term strategic partnerships. Simon’s background spans complex capital projects, commercial strategy and governance.
Outside Health New Zealand, he serves as Deputy Chair of the Council for Volunteer Service Abroad, reflecting his strong commitment to service and community impact.
National Head of Delivery
Health New Zealand
Minister for Building & Construction
Hon Simon Watts
Hon Simon Watts is the Minister for Building and Construction, Minister of Climate Change,
Minister of Local Government, Minister of Revenue and Minister for Auckland. He was elected
as the MP for the North Shore in 2022.
Simon studied Accounting and Finance at Waikato University and has worked in investment
banking in Asia, Europe, and the United Kingdom.
Simon has also completed a Health Science degree at Auckland University of Technology. He
continues to volunteer with St John as an ambulance officer and is a registered Paramedic
alongside his duties as a Member of Parliament.
Director | Senior Structural Engineer
Steffan Sonntag
Steffan is a Director and Senior Structural Engineer at Nemean Consulting Ltd, leading the design and technical delivery of structural projects across New Zealand. He has worked extensively in off-site and modular construction, helping manufacturers, developers, and project teams navigate the challenges of design integration, buildability, and project delivery.
Frustrated by the amount of time and cost lost before projects ever reach the factory floor, Steffan is focused on improving front-end decision-making through better engineering, better data, and practical digital tools.
At COLAB26, he will share why many modular projects struggle long before manufacturing begins, and what the industry can do to close that gap.
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Nemean Consulting Ltd
Thomas Kastner
Thomas is a German-trained carpenter and Civil Engineer who has spent over 20 years in the New Zealand construction industry, delivering several award-winning timber buildings. Working primarily with main contractors, he has built deep expertise in offsite manufactured mass and light timber structures, gaining a thorough understanding of both traditional building methods and the emerging technologies reshaping the sector. Thomas is a passionate advocate for Lean Construction techniques and tirelessly works to improve productivity across the local industry, always looking for practical ways to close the gap between design intent and on-site delivery.
Thomas currently serves as Operations Manager at Hector Egger New Zealand, a role he has held since the Swiss-based company's launch in the heart of the South Island. Hector Egger is a disruptor in the New Zealand construction market, delivering high-performance offsite manufactured light timber framed structures for residential and commercial projects, and Thomas is deeply committed to the precision and quality that define its approach.
His breadth of experience across conventional and offsite construction, paired with his focus on productivity and Lean principles, makes him a strong fit for OffsiteNZ's mission of driving innovation, efficiency, and mainstream adoption of offsite construction across New Zealand.
Operations Manager
Hector Egger New Zealand