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Graduate Programme Wins Award for Dunedin's Highway Highlanders
Transit and two of its contract partners in Dunedin have won New Zealand's Graduate Infratrain NZ Industry Best Practice award at the Roading Excellence Awards 2006 for their Rotational Graduate Secondment programme.
The award was announced at the Roading New Zealand conferencein Wellington at the beginning of September.
Transit shares the award with contract partners Works Infrastructure and MWH. Their partnership, known as the Highway Highlanders, forms the largest hybrid contract trial both in length and scope of activities covering maintenance of 750kms of state highway for five years.
Included in their agreement is an innovative three-year rotational graduate programme for selected graduates who spend a year with each company while being fully mentored. The success of the rotating arrangement has prompted some Transit offices and Road Controlling Authorities to use this principle for their own graduate programmes.
"The Highway Highlanders graduate programme's success in the Roading Excellence Awards illustrates an outstanding example of industry co-operation," Roly Frost general manager network operations says.
"It shows the power of cooperation in the working relationship of the three partners as well as the graduate engineers. We want to see this attitude cemented across the whole transport industry as an effective way of working."
"The award also highlights the success of the graduate programme. It not only benefits the graduates taking part, but also develops their potential for the advantage of New Zealand," Mr Frost says.
Graduate engineers Tim Siau Janna Dominic and David Jackways are in the last year of their rotational secondment with the Otago programme and will return to their respective parent companies.Interviews are currently being held for the Highway Highlander's second graduate programme commencing in 2007.
The graduate programme is a key means Transit uses to attract motivated new engineers into the transport sector. There are currently 33 graduates in Transit offices throughout the country.