SHE’S a very well-known face in a very private industry, but Julia Hartley Moore’s 15 years as a private investigator is only her most recent incarnation. At the age of 16 she was mother to three kids under the age of one. In her 20s and married to a millionaire Waikato horse-stud owner, she, along with many of his friends and family, lost everything after money they put into his finance company was poured into his farm instead of invested.

In her 30s she worked as a “groom” – keeping jumpy young thoroughbred horses calm on the 13-hour flight from Auckland to Hong Kong, before ending up working for Mohamed Al-Fayed at Harrods of London, where she blew the whistle on a multi-million poundstaff theft ring while working on the perfume

Back in New Zealand in 1996, aged 42 and wondering how on earth she was going to make a buck, she decided to set up her own firm after a little extra motivation from none other than Oprah. While watching a show about turning passion into a successful home business, she decided “well, I think I will”.

At age 18, she had been turned away from the New Zealand Police for being “too feminine”, but had always had good instincts. And after the experience in London, Harrods’ head of security told her she’d make a fine private investigator. So “Arbeth and Co” was started with just a telephone and an ad in the Yellow Pages. She runs the business discreetly from her Auckland-fringe home with the help of “a very good accountant”, deliberately shunning the big flash offices, big signage and the fleet of leased cars which was, and still is, so appealing to others.

And therein lies the contrast between keeping a low profile and having a well-known face, but it’s this combination that’s kept her in business. She’s seen many private investigation firms come and go. “You’ve only got to look at the yellow pages now, and see what the advertising is like for us compared to when I started when every other cop had a full-page ad [saying] ’28 years ex police’, ’25 years ex police’ – big massive ads, and now how different it is and how small it’s got and yet I still tick along very nicely.”

Her high media profile, including several books and appearances on Sunday, 20/20, Fair Go, Good Morning and Radio New Zealand, means sacrificing anonymity in an industry where most prefer to remain anonymous. But that allowed her to give up surveillance work – which tends to swing between wildly exciting and excruciatingly boring – to focus on the side of the business she enjoys the most.

The good surprises her every now and then, but it’s the bad and the ugly that keep her in business. “You’ve got fraudsters, like betrayers,” she says. “They will always be there. A lot of people that do this kind of thing, it is just the way they are – they’re opportunists, they’re always looking for an easy way.”

Tracking down and dealing with schemers and scammers takes, she says, a certain kind of person. “To do this job you have to be the eternal optimist.”

What good is an honest sleuth if he can’t balance the books? New Zealand private investigators are remarkably incorrupt, but sorely lacking in business nous, says top PI Ron McQuilter.
Story by Andrea O’Neil, photograph by Isaac de Reus

SHERLOCK Holmes. Hercule Poirot. Taggart, Barnaby, Morse. The British love for all things sleuth is reflected in their films, television series and novels. New Zealand, however, lacks a cultural fixation on professional and amateur detectives. We don’t make films starring hard-boiled private investigators, and the few detectives to grace our TV channels are invariably foreign.

Where does the Kiwi indifference come from, when a quick glance at the yellow pages reveals the country is full of detectives? One of our top PIs, Ron McQuilter, has a theory. We aren’t fascinated with sleuths because, unlike Britain, we haven’t experienced a history of rogue PI behaviour. “In New Zealand, private investigators are definitely different to anywhere else in the world,” McQuilter says. “When you go to court in New Zealand and you say you’re a private investigator, people tend to think that you’re a credible person. Overseas when you say you’re a private investigator, people still look at you [warily].”

McQuilter should know. He began his career in his native Glasgow as a policeman, but directing traffic wasa far cry from his dreams of being an  where he witnessed what he calls “cowboy” tactics from his peers. “It was the wild west,” he says.

“It was a setup. You would get guys to get divorces, you would be kicking in doors and taking photographs, and doing all sorts of things. It was horrible.”

It wasn’t ethics, however, but rather love that brought McQuilter to New Zealand in 1983. He booked a two-week holiday to visit his Kiwi girlfriend – now wife – and never went home. Within a month he was working for Armourguard, stunning the firm by completing two weeks’ worth of work in two days. “Just because people would talk to me,” he says. “You ask them questions, and they’ll answer you. Whereas in Britain if you ask somebody a question they won’t want to answer you, or they’ll shut a door in your face, or worse.”

But working hard is typical immigrant behaviour, McQuilter says. Prejudice against his “funny accent” and not having a strong personal network only made him strive harder. “I managed to latch a couple of clients who supported me really really well. And I gave them great service.” It wasn’t long before he set up his own business, The Investigation Bureau, renamed Paragon in 2004. The business quickly emerged as an industry leader, handling fraud cases worth millions of dollars and securing top corporate and government contracts. McQuilter has become the public face of private investigation in New Zealand, chairing the New Zealand Institute of Professional Investigators and appearing regularly in the media and on television’s Missing Pieces.

Three cases stand out in McQuilter’s career. He investigated abuse claims made by former Lake Alice psychiatric patients. He nabbed a Lord of the Rings employee trying to sell the film online before its release.

And more recently, he solved a cold case concerning the disappearance in 2003 of UK-based New Zealander Lee Sheppard. Sheppard’s family, frustrated the case remained unsolved by British police, hired McQuilter, who used evidence from Sheppard’s coworkers to prove he had been killed by machinery at his workplace.

Corporate crime makes up a large percentage of McQuilter’s work, and is as serious a problem here as back in the UK, he says. “Our dollar’s worth half the British pound, I know that, but it’s still [costing us] millions, just millions and millions.” His advice to company managers is to call in professional investigators as soon as a problem is identified. Businesses which try to deal with the problem internally can destroy evidence and give fraudsters time to escape, he says. “They’ll try and do it themselves, and all of a sudden it’s like ‘oh shit, we need help’.”

Anticipating fraud and creating a strategy to deal with the inevi- table can save a chief executive from having to take the blame when money disappears. “I dealt with one which was a $500,000 theft in a company, and the CEO fell on his sword, and resigned,” McQuilter says. “The CEO didn’t know about it, but he didn’t know how to deal with it. He knew if he told the shareholders he’d lose his job.”

Most PI businesses do not succeed like Paragon has. Investigators, 99 per cent of them former cops, just don’t have the business know-how to strike out on their own, McQuilter says. “The police don’t teach you to run a business.” He recently employed a full-time business mentor to help him expand into security work and improve Paragon’s online presence. “I realised that even though I’d been doing it a long time, I still need business help,” he says. “Probably I’m one of the half a dozen who want to be cops, or private investigators,but we also want to be business people. And that’s kind of the formula for success.”

IN the beginning, staff would symbolically mark every product sale with a pin placed in a map of the world. But eventually, as sales and company growth ballooned, the efficiency of the map system was somewhat diminished: certain countries started getting a bit crowded – the US in particular – and then staff started swiping the pins.

Telemetry Research’s small team of 12 staff, its compact offices at the University of Auckland and its academic beginnings contrast with what it has achieved since it first started doing business in 2004.

The company has had sales throughout the US, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America, and recorded a revenue increase of 403 per cent from 2008 to 2010.

The global market for telemetry technology in animal research – wireless devices implanted into lab animals to monitor vital stats like blood pressure and brain signals for research – is effectively a two-horse race between Auckland-based Telemetry Research and Minnesota-based Data Sciences International (DSI).

DSI is over eight times its Kiwi competitor’s size, over 12,000 kilometres away and has been in business for an extra 20 years.

Unfazed, Telemetry Research co-founder Simon Malpas says innovation in the form of a key technological point of difference has allowed his company to not just enter the global market, but to help expand it.

That key point of difference is the fact that their products’ batteries can be recharged while still inside the animal by placing it on a re-charging pad. DSI’s offerings use a non-rechargeable battery which must be sent away for refurbishment.

“In cutting that step out, we’re reducing both the cost and time of undertaking research,” Malpas says.

The technology is used in a variety of research areas, including cardiovascular disease and heart failure. Because telemetry technology is wireless it eliminates the use of tethers in animals, facilitating stress- free, long-term monitoring.

Explaining the company’s growth and its stability within a duopoly, Malpas emphasises the importance of Telemetry Research’s international partnerships with data acquisitions systems provider ADInstruments and medical technology company Millar Instruments, both of which are renowned in the life sciences industry and have the resources of 120-150 staff each.

Owing to these joint efforts and partners, Telemetry Research has sold to over 30 countries. Malpas estimates his company currently holds “less than 5 per cent” of the market share but that is growing every year.

“We don’t differentiate on price – there’s no point in a two-player market,” he says.

“We differentiate ourselves by offering a technologically different product and committed customer support. Big companies like our competitor often have to ‘tell’ a customer what its product is; the customer is presented with a final piece of technology and left to take it or leave it.

“With a smaller company like ours, however, we’re able to work alongside the customer to under- stand their problems, and develop a solution with them.”

It is this smart partnering, and readiness to “get closer to the customer offshore, get that customer intimacy and empathy for customers” that national head of the Deloitte Fast 50 programme Matt McKendry says has helped Telemetry Research rank in their list of New Zealand’s 50 fastest growing companies for the last two years running.

Telemetry Research was also ranked in both 2009 and 2010 as one of the Deloitte Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 companies.

“To be really close to the customer, that whole customer intimacy, that’s almost the point where you can reduce the risk of innovation, because you are, dare I say it, co-creating and then you can go, ‘what are the other iterations?’” McKendry says.

At which point he says companies should take what they know and “run like the clappers”.

Sometimes innovation comes in the form of great leaps forward. More often though, it is incremental improvement.

“Like many businesses, we began with a very niche product and went on to realise that the experience it gave could be applied outside of its initial use,” Malpas says.

The initial concept grew when he enlisted the help of colleague David Budgett to help design a telemetry system for his research because what he wanted wasn’t available.

Discovering the next commercial iteration of their idea involves progression between two kingdoms: animal and human.

“While our products have been animal-specific in their settings, our concepts expand for human monitoring purposes as well,” Malpas says.

“We’re currently working with other companies to expand this – but as you can imagine, human research involves a lot more protocol than animal research.”

The most important thing to lead a start-up to success, as Malpas and partners have with Telemetry Research, is to invest in research and development and “good people” early on, for the benefits they will yield later.

“We don’t come from a business or finance background, we come from a technology background, and we know the worst thing to do would be to constrain our staff. They need to be able to share and develop ideas at many different levels – that’s when technology can become commercially feasible.”

Kirk should know a thing or two about goals, motivation and the economic divide between Australia and New Zealand. He captained the only New Zealand All Black team to have won a Rugby World Cup and went on to a high-profile career in business. He also qualified as a doctor before a Rhodes Scholarship took him to Oxford University, work for international management consultancy McKinsey and as a prime ministerial adviser in New Zealand. He has been based in Sydney for several years but still has business interests on this side of the Tasman.

Prime Minister John Key’s government wants to close the income gap between Australia and New Zealand by 2025.

Kirk says that while it is vital to have goals and targets it is also important to acknowledge that “Australia is going through a once-in-100-year boom”.

“We need to think about whether we have a long enough timeframe.”

While Australia is a tough act to follow, Kirk says it is natural for New Zealand to compare itself with its larger neighbour, particularly because both countries compete in the same pool of talent.

So, if we continue to see Australia as a benchmark, what does he think we need to do to close the gap, even if at a more sedate pace than the one suggested by the Government’s target?

Kirk lists labour and capital productivity, education and the removal of regulatory barriers to business as some of the priorities. He also questions the “plethora” of corporate structures that exist in New Zealand for holding assets “none of which have profit as their primary goal”, as potential deterrents to growth.

Now 50, Kirk thinks it is unlikely he will return to New Zealand to live, as his family is settled in Sydney and their children are at school. Sydney is also “the commercial centre of Australasia” and a step closer to the expanding markets of Asia than New Zealand.

He is unashamed in admitting that he moved to Australia for career reasons but it is clear that Kirk still identifies strongly with New Zealand; business brings him here every few weeks, he says.

His jobs in Australia have included a three-year spell as chief executive of the Fairfax Media empire. He left in 2008 as the company, like many media organisations around the world, was caught up in the turmoil of the global financial crisis.

Kirk took time out after Fairfax and has since moved back into business in a variety of roles. These include executive chairman at the Hoyts cinema group and boardroom roles with New Zealand investment managers Forsyth Barr and Pacific Fibre, a company aiming to build a high-speed broadband connection between Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Kirk has also co-founded a private equity fund, Bailador.

Looking to the future, what frightens him? Poor public policy, he replies, and wasteful use of money. He also fears lack of education and engagement by individuals in debates about what is in the best interests of their nations. And what excites him? Working with people he likes and enjoys and the dynamism of business. Australia and New Zealand have their share of such businesses, he says.

“I got to the beginning of the sixth form and decided this wasn’t for me. I came home and said to Mum ‘I’m leaving school and I’m going to live in London’.”

She had grandparents in Scotland who provided a UK base but this was less a cosy family visit than a working holiday typical of New Zealanders several years her senior. Moon’s jobs included a stint as a chambermaid at a hotel near London’s Gatwick Airport.

Weren’t her parents terrified?

“I’m very determined.”

This is something of an understatement from a woman who, now 41, went on to become two-times World Mountain Running Champion, World Stair Racing Champion – she has run up some of the world’s tallest buildings – and New Zealand Sports Woman of the Year. She has also won numerous national athletics titles and circumnavigated the northern hemisphere in the 95-day Blue Planet Run, a relay event to raise awareness about world shortages of safe drinking water. Moon has also been named as one of the Junior Chamber International’s Outstanding Young Persons of the World for her work in the community. This includes volunteering at Wellington’s Compassion Centre soup kitchen.

That’s literally a lot of miles since dropping out of high school. After several years leading a “gypsy life”, moving backwards and forwards from London, Moon decided she needed to complete her education and at 22 began university courses that led to a masters degree in business studies and diplomas in teaching and sports studies. Simultaneously she had renewed her interest in running, a sport that she had showed an aptitude for as a child, and textbooks went with her as she travelled to international athletic events.

Moon admits that despite having an academic qualification in business, making money is not an objective that motivates her. She has had to support herself during her athletic career working in a variety of jobs including teaching, nannying and gym instruction. Recently she has set up a massage business.

Moon may not be a business-person in the conventional sense, but businesses are among the organisations that invite her to share her experiences and tips for success.

She admits to having been extremely nervous when first asked to speak in public but with characteristic fortitude “faced the fear”.

“Now I quite enjoy it.”

With such a rounded life, which includes adherence to the Buddhist faith, she has a broad range of experience to draw on. She is particularly interested in communicating her observations on how to get the best out of the people you are working with.

Moon says that she has learned much about managing people from her work in the soup kitchen. The Sisters of Compassion, who run the kitchen, have a non-judgmental approach and Moon has observed the laughter and warmth with which they approach their work. The result is that people who struggle on the fringes of society eat together harmoniously in the confined space of the soup kitchen. She also draws on her experience working in a team in the Blue Planet endurance race.

“We all understood those values of patience and tolerance.

“I’m motivated by people and business is people.”

RUGBY really means the world to talent-recruitment specialist Tony Cutting. While the amateur player never did a traditional Kiwi “overseas experience”, rugby tours have taken him across the globe three times. The tours opened his eyes not only to the world, but to the possibilities of playing a season of rugby abroad – his club lost several senior players during its 1988 tour of France and Italy.

He’s now dedicated to giving players worldwide a similar chance to broaden their horizons. “A lot of New Zealanders do their OE after they come out of university. Rugby’s basically another university,” he says. Cutting has drawn on years of recruitment experience to launch rugbytalent.com, an online talent pool that connects mid-level players with international clubs.

“Locally, you’re either going to get identified as a potential local rep, or maybe even an All Black, and those guys are pretty well taken care of. [We’re targeting] the guys that sit outside that, and there’s literally thousands of those guys.”

Players and clubs can advertise on the website for free, but clubs pay a $500-a-month licence fee to search the full talent database.

While the top 10 rugby nations are making it harder for international players to qualify, plenty of emerging rugby nations are desperate to recruit high-quality players and coaches, Cutting says.

Former All Black Grant Fox is a director of the business, which has a staff of four travelling New Zealand to spread word of the business to local clubs. Believing the best business relationships are formed face-to-face, Cutting has booked an April trip to New York, Kansas and Colorado to meet interested clubs from the US. While he is there, he also hopes to explore opportunities with Mexican clubs.

“We’re in burn mode. We’re a typical start-up business,” he laughs. While the business is eating through capital right now, Cutting is confident about breaking even by the end of 2011, once a major sponsor is found for the website’s advertising board.

Cutting is a man who thinks big, and while the licence fee will eventually fund his venture, recruitment is just one arm of his vision. Talent relocation depends on the existence of clubs to recruit players, and Cutting acknowledges that many clubs struggle to survive, let alone expand.

Business and philanthropy blur in Cutting’s scheme to save mid-level rugby from collapse: rugbytalent.com offers to revamp clubs’ websites for free, as a way of renewing interest from players, advertisers and sponsors.

Further services, from statistics software to customised search engines, will be charged for.

However, Cutting is so determined to revitalise his market that he will split the profits from the recruitment licence fees with clubs.

“It’s got to be a win-win for both parties. And that’s really what the business is about, I guess.”

Further down the track, Cutting has plans to give New Zealand’s substantial network of ex-All Blacks a “life after rugby”, conducting training workshops around the globe.

Cutting insists that if he hadn’t played sport, he wouldn’t be in business today. “Without sport, I don’t know that I could have been successful. [As] a young rugby player, you build relationships,” he says. “You make contacts for Africa. Literally. That’s what opened my eyes up to the value of networking. And if you look at my business interests, they’re all based on those same values.”

WHEN people ask Simon Scott what he does, he tells them he takes corporate strategy documents out of people’s bottom drawers and puts them onto their office walls.

Simon Scott is a self-confessed “strategy nerd”. He is completing a PhD on the subject, and he is one-third of data visualisation company Infovision, formed with fellow strategy enthusiast Hadley Smith and designer Brendon Palmer in late 2009.

Scott and his former tutor Smith hit upon infographics as the antidote to what he calls “long, corporate-derived, formulaic discussions of strategy that are written by MBAs and accountants, and are put in people’s bottom drawers after they read the first page and fall asleep”.

The trio sees a place for infographics in every workplace, communicating to staff a clear understanding of their role in the wider corporate strategy.

“We want them to say, ‘that’s how I fit in that process. Here I am, I’m involved in this process’,” Smith says.

Low staff retention is always found where workers feel no ownership of their work environment or processes, he says.

“I don’t think data visualisation is the future or a competitive advantage. I think it’s a necessity right here and now.”

Their strong focus on communication has inevitably gained the trio attention from outside the strategy world.

Magazine work has made up much of their bread and butter over the past year, and the public sector has embraced their representations of public-private collaborations.

Any infographics work the team takes on has to be juggled with full-time careers – alongside Scott’s PhD, Smith is a management consultant at a “big four”, and Palmer has a design business.

“It’s not like any of us have the time, but we make it,” Scott says.

It’s not all slog and toil however – the long-term friends tend to conduct their meetings over a few drinks at the pub. “This is about creating the experience that we weren’t going to get from working.”

A key moment in the company’s growth came in mid-2010, when business incubator Grow Wellington placed Infovision in the top 10 per cent of 1200 startups in its Bright Ideas Challenge.

While they rave about the invaluable business nous gained from Bright Ideas, the team removed themselves from the competition after being encouraged to focus on user-generated templates rather than bespoke designs.

“You can make as many graphs in Excel as you want, but we’re about creating that narrative – the narrative of your strategy, the narrative of your data.

“That unifying theme has to come from careful thought, application and understanding,” Scott says.

Despite opting out of the chance to win $125,000 in business development, the team says quitting Bright Ideas was not a tough decision.

“We thought, this is not the business we want to own. What happens if we get this money? We don’t want it,” Scott says.

“We could have been millionaires off their idea. But I think we’ll get there anyway.”

Working on the Lord of the Rings franchise made Barrie Osborne, whose other producing credits include The Matrix, Face/Off, Dick Tracy, and The World’s Fastest Indian, a heavyweight advocate for New Zealand film-making.

Osborne says the key to a healthy career, as well as a healthy industry, is collaboration. Reconciling the different needs and input of different people and departments, and balancing those with practical constraints like time and money, is key to running a good production, he says.

“There’s always potential for conflict . . . and sometimes it’s almost unavoidable. I view my job as trying to serve the picture, and I try to be a great collaborator with a director… you’re trying to achieve the director’s vision. And sometimes you’ve got to try to find a way where you can have a discussion that’s collaborative rather than confrontational, and you try to do that, and it’s very difficult.”

The key is being able to relate to a wide range of people and build their respect.

“You do work really hard when you start out, you don’t get paid much money because there’s so many people competing for those jobs. So I think you owe it to the people who are doing those jobs, if they’re really serious, to give them – to expose them to knowledge and skills and help them along.”

It worked for him. After finishing college Osborne was drafted into the US army in Korea at the height of the Vietnam war. He rose to lieutenant colonel, in charge of plans, operations and training from Seoul up to the demilitarised zone but, rather than pursue a military career, he decided to follow his dreams in film.

Back in New York, he handed out 1000 resumes, talked with union men in the industry, visited equipment houses to learn about the gear, and swept floors in editing suites. Eventually he was offered a job as a runner (an errand boy) for a boutique commercial house.

“The guy that ran production there was a great guy, because…he took the time to teach me how to do things, and he used to give me budgets to do, and I think he did it just as an exercise so I would learn how to do a budget. So he was actually very very generous and that was a great experience. I try to treat people the same way, because I think it’s important.”

Osborne honed his craft working alongside greats such as Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty and Sydney Pollack. The more people you can learn from, he says, the more rounded and knowledgeable you become.

After five years making commercials, on his second attempt, Osborne was selected from 1000 applicants into the Directors’ Guild of America training programme. By then, he knew his way around a film set. He was able to get things done and then offer to help other people, who in return gave him other opportunities.

As a trainee, Osborne worked on The Godfather: Part II, Three Days of the Condor, and All the President’s Men, and then got his first job as a location manager on 1970s detective TV series Kojak. A spot as production manager for a second unit on William Friedkin’s Sorcerer followed, which grew into a larger role, and from there he was recommended as a production manager for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

Osborne continued to build skills and experience, making use of his army grounding working with logistics, which led him into production.

Currently back in the US, Osborne says New Zealand remains well-placed to attract off-shore productions and build a strong film industry.International productions can slash their costs by working in New Zealand.

New Zealand offers cheaper logistical costs, cheaper and more flexible labour (unions in the US have stringent rules enforcing who can do what), and attractive government grants and tax incentives for big productions.

“There’s great government support in New Zealand . . . because the country is of a size that you can actually go and meet with members of parliament [or] the prime minister and they’re accessible and interested . . . there’s a willingness that’s really exceptional.”

But it’s disappointing that New Zealand-based banks have not embraced the opportunities provided by the burgeoning film industry.

“For a studio film it doesn’t really matter, but for an independent film it’s necessary to take the rebate or the grant and borrow against that so you can finance your film with that money, and it would be great to see the banking industry embrace that…it’s not a very risky loan.”

When management turned off the tower’s external lights to do their bit during the midwinter electricity crisis of 2008 they found themselves fielding outraged phone calls from Aucklanders demanding they be turned back on.

“It was public demand – people felt we were being stingy,” Sky City Energy and Environment Coordinator Jonathan Woodbridge Buys says. Not to be deterred, the technology eventually evolved enough for them to install the latest in efficient LED lighting on a remote control system.

The twinkling lights on the skyline are now beacons of efficiency.

When Woodbridge Buys started the role in August 2007 he spent the first few weeks studying the tower and hotel’s $6.5 million energy and utilities budget – concentrating on the areas of biggest spend, looking at where the fastest returns could come from, and investigating new lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation technology.

Within a couple of weeks he had saved the company more than $20,000.

He says energy conservation at Sky City works to an “it has to do good not just feel good” mantra. They aren’t going to partake in energy saving initiatives unless they pay themselves off and produce a return on investment. Even the gaming machine manufacturers are doing their bit. Their newest offerings emit less light and heat by using liquid crystal displays, flat tubes and panels, and touch screens instead of buttons.

“If you put your hand on top of an old machine it used to be hot and all that heat had to be got rid of in the gaming space.”

The Sky Tower is a somewhat unique example, but what about the more bog-standard office building? There are around 75,000 commercial buildings in New Zealand, which collectively account for 9 per cent of our national energy use – about the amount of electricity used by 1.2 million homes. Analysis by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) shows that most buildings could save 10–15 per cent of this energy, and much of it with paybacks of less than a year.

“It isn’t rocket science. We’ve worked with many businesses which are stronger and more profitable as a result of good energy management,” EECA Business Account Manager Dan Coffey says.

Companies like Sky City that invest in energy efficiency find not only that it’s good for the bottom line, but it makes a happier workplace. In Wellington, the Reserve Bank has just undergone an energy transformation, cutting energy use in its offices by 22 per cent with a programme of ‘continuous commissioning’. This means they constantly monitor and adjust the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to optimise their performance.

The project had a payback of 12 months and they say the response from staff has been positive. Research confirms buildings tuned for energy efficiency record improved staff satisfaction. Coffey explains it is because the systems are adjusted to ensure they aren’t fighting each other by overheating or overcooling.

 CEO of the New Zealand Green Building Council Jane Henley says an office is more than just four walls. “Buildings are a powerful business service, which shape the culture and wellbeing of the people who spend day after day in them. Many companies are starting to understand the opportunity to reduce operating costs, and importantly to choose space that has high levels of natural light and zoned temperature control,” she says.

Natural light, fresh air and access to outdoor views, as well as control over their own workspace temperature and lighting, can directly affect staff’s productivity.

 “We’re seeing research overseas that shows companies which invest in these features achieve significant productivity gains and cost savings,” Henley says.

She cites the example of Australia’s first six star Green Star rated office building, where productivity has risen by 10.9 per cent since staff moved in, with an estimated annual saving of $2 million. There is a growing movement towards energy-efficient commercial architecture and design, which EECA says will eventually have a flow-on effect on energy use.

The International Energy Agency’s Dr Nigel Jollands says the high global interest in this field makes energy efficient buildings “the new black”, with lots of R&D now focused on energy efficient buildings.  New Zealand has been slower off the mark in this regard, but there are some stellar local examples. The Selwyn District Council in Canterbury commissioned a new headquarters that made the most of passive solar gains. They ensured an energy audit was carried out on the design before the concrete was even poured.

Realistically, most Kiwi businesses aren’t in a position to commission a brand new eco- building, but as companies like Sky City prove, there’s much positive potential in existing buildings. Getting staff buy-in is crucial for an efficiency programme, Coffey says. Half of the energy used in offices is under their direct control – such as lights and office equipment.

“A simple after hours walk-through can deliver returns. There’s often a surprising amount of plant and equipment running unnecessarily.”

Coffey says he’s seeing energy awareness shift from being confined to engineers, to a general management discipline.

“[It] makes sense because why would any well-run business pour money down the drain?”

Dave Chisholm was dux of his school, attended a couple of universities and has recently finished with an honours degree in Architecture. He’s designed a few houses in his spare time (a rare commodity for Chisholm) with his latest projects coming to fruition in Khandallah, Kaiwharawhara, and another in a slightly more exotic location, the waterfront of Sydney. However, he’s not employed in an architecture firm like many of his peers, he is going it alone, armed with a list of ideas a mile long, many not related to architecture in the slightest.

On the day I speak with Dave he is a little bleary-eyed, and admits it’s not often he gets home from work before 10pm. Working long long hours, is part of his routine, which is self-designed, but one he’s hoping wont last forever. “I don’t think I could ever not work at all, but I do hope things will be easier for me one day because of the hours I’m putting in now.” He drifts a little as he mentions his dreams of yachts and overseas travel, but snaps back sharply when I ask the obvious question: “Wouldn’t it be safer to just go and find a job, make your way up the ladder, and become an expert in a specific field?” “No way,” he says, “I’d much rather learn a lot about a variety of things, and have the flexibility to follow opportunities as they arise, than work 9-5 doing the same thing every day for the rest of my life.”

So how did it all start? He recalls his first ever ‘business’ at age 8. It wasn’t completely, erm legal. “My best friend and I decided it would be a great idea to charge all our friends a membership fee to belong to our cricket club. Except there wasn’t really such a thing, we just took the money and ‘invested’ it… in snacks! Eventually, our parents found our Pringles tin full of cash and made us give it all back!” He goes on to describe another ‘learning experience’ where he took all the steps to set up a bouncy castle hire business, only to find it wasn’t exactly what he had in mind; “it looked great on paper, but the one thing I neglected to consider was the impact a yard full of screaming kids would have on my sanity!”

At the age of 14, he then decided to teach himself web design after being repeatedly told what a waste of time it was. Two years later he was making thousands a month by teaming up with an American salesman, who sold the sites and sent the cheques back over to New Zealand. “Can’t say I saved much of the money I made,” he admits, “but I learnt a heck of a lot about the web in the process!”

He’s been designing and working for himself ever since, using the experience he’s gained so far to help him start web business Crescendo Multimedia, with his partner Nadine Isler (observant readers will know Isler also ‘moonlights’ as editor for IN-Business magazine). “It’s been hard keeping up with the work, but in many ways we’ve been lucky, in that we haven’t needed to spend anything on marketing.” They started with a single response from a flyer drop, and since then have grown almost exclusively through word of mouth. “I guess that’s the key in this industry, web designers are a dime a dozen these days, from the teenagers in their basements to the expensive agencies in the CBD, so a personal recommendation goes a long way.”

Chisholm’s latest web venture is Adscape, and he lights up visibly when he starts telling me about it. “It’s a website for advertising opportunities. So if you have any kind of advertising space to sell, you add a listing, and then sell special offers. He’s excited about the website, and while it’s still in its early stages, it has already caught the attention of many prominent media companies and has a lot of growth potential.

He’s also excited about the digital publishing service Crescendo specialises in, which is about converting documents so they can be read online. “It’s already popular in Europe and America, but it’s yet to go mainstream here, perhaps due to the mindset that you can’t beat the tactile experience of physically turning paper pages. The thing is, it shouldn’t be a case of either/or. I think businesses need to see digital publishing not as replacing print, but as an extremely cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to expand distribution and engage with their audience in an innovative way. It’s also a great way to bring documents to life, through rich-media content such as videos, forms and links.”

It’s easy to feel tired after a conversation with Dave, who could happily talk for hours about the ventures he’s involved with. I leave him at his desk surrounded in big screens and paper chaos, and have no doubt that we will be hearing plenty more about this young entrepreneur.