It seems like it was only last week that we were writing up our ‘year that’s been’ summary for 2018, and in the blink of an eye, here we are again writing our summary for 2019! We said it last year but it’s true, it’s been another busy year where we’ve achieved milestones, encouraged our people to reach their potential, implemented balanced outcomes for clients and worked towards, and will continue to work towards, becoming an industry leader in sustainable business practices.
A lot of our readers are probably aware that back in 2017, we established resolutions that are a series of simple statements that we use to develop our culture and engage with others to prove we are living our values, over and above the good work we do in the business for our clients. These resolutions are land, people, water, and thriving into the future, and in 2019, they were at the core of every action we made and conversation we had. They keep us bound to walking the talk, but it takes foresight to do this, and like previous years, at the start of 2019 we set goals that were in line with these resolutions to ensure we were living them. See below:
Land - This is our land. We preserve this environment for the next generation to live, work and thrive.
We sponsored tree planting to offset the carbon emissions of the 2019 New Zealand Coastal Society Annual Conference, Principal Landscape Architect Renèe Davies was the keynote speaker at the Park City Symposium in Chengdu generating awareness on how landscape architecture can make positive contributions to city designs and improve overall sustainability, Director Alice Andrew became Chairman of the Tread Lightly Trust, Principals Nigel Mather and James Blackwell were the key speakers at an introduction to contaminated land seminar hosted by 4Sight, we marched with other like-minded individuals at the climate strike, and we switched coffee suppliers to the socially responsible, carbon neutral Grounded Coffee.
People - We believe in developing our people and our culture to grow together.
Hiring 35 awesome new staff members (that’s 40% more than last year!) means we can do things 40% better. Our budding Landscape team took out the Publication of the Year award at the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architecture Awards, we attended (and sponsored) countless conferences all over the country and invested in a record-breaking amount of staff development, and for the second year running our Touch Rugby team played their hearts out against Auckland's finest.
Water - Our waters represent constant change. Our commitment is to ensure the quality of this precious resource.
Both Coastal and Freshwater have been hot topics for us this year, Senior Coastal Consultant Sam Morgan and Landscape Architect Rebecca Cray spoke at the Green Pavlova Conference on the issues facing our coastal areas and how best to manage them, Principal Ian Mayhew was an expert panellist at the EIANZ Action for Healthy Waterways event discussing the important issues on the Government's Action for Healthy Waterways and the proposed NPSFM and NESFM, and our involvement with Experiencing Marine Reserves (EMR) enabled our team to run free community events that allow the public to experience the benefits of marine reserves first hand.
Thriving into the future - Today we share our knowledge to educate and shape the future.
The 4Sight brand thrived with the opening of a new office in Gisborne, we attended the first-anniversary celebration of the Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) and continued to live by the values the CLC represents, we held 3 BNZ financial seminars to help our team improve their financial wellbeing, we went māwhero (pink) to support women (and men) with breast cancer, we adorned ourselves in karaka (orange) to support Shine’s Light it Orange Day to stop domestic violence, got our Gumboots out for GumbootUp to support young people suffering from depression, and Director Michael Lindgreen spoke at a Ted Talk-style event organised by Delta Insurance on paradigm shifts within environmental risk and sustainability.
This is only a small snapshot of the year that’s been! Along with all of the above, we celebrated birthdays, 7 new babies, graduations, a new Dunedin office location, shared a cocktail or mocktail with our clients at the 4Sight annual mid-winter function, celebrated Te Reo for Māori language week, quizzed our staff on native birds for Conservation Week (the Ecology team had an unfair advantage), hosted a Mexican Fiesta with tacos and all things Mexican, ate smoked fish courtesy of Mike Lindgreen, had a roast dinner for lunch (we’re looking at you Dunedin), got creative with making our coffees during the Great Wellington Coffee Machine Crisis of 2019, and so much more!
We’re looking forward to another fantastic year of growth, exciting projects and adventures. But for now, we’d like to say a huge thank you to our incredible team (featured below), we couldn’t have done it without you. Bring on 2020!