Top award for design company

Hastings' pool designers, LHTDesign, is punching above its weight and has a Silver Award for excellence as proof.

The recent award was for Queenstown's Aqualand, presented by The Association of Consulting Engineers New Zealand (ACENZ).

LHTDesign director Tony Loughnan is proud of his company's niche expertise recognition - especially because they were in competition with multi-national firms.

"There are about 165 firms in ACENZ with about 8500 people employed, so we are pretty small with a staff of 20," he said.

"We are by far the most prolific pool designers in the country."

LHTDesign is a truly local firm, Mr Loughnan was born in Hastings.

"I was in Hamilton for seven years working for a firm of architects, which is where I learned a few things I wasn't supposed to know," he said.

After being made a partner he left to start his own firm in Hawke's Bay.

"There was a huge hole here and not enough people doing the work.

"I started by myself in 1974 on the corner of Queen St and Karamu Rd, in Selwyn Cushing's upper story."

A major client was Hastings District Council. "I worked mainly with Bob Hall and he came and joined me.

"Alan Thompson also left the council to join. That's how it became LHT - Loughnan, Hall and Thompson.

"It was the days of infrastructural building. We just did industrial building after industrial building - today you would do one or two a year. So that got us going."

They also started with a lot of primary industry work.

"In the past we did an awful lot of cool stores. We did all Applefield's stuff down in Christchurch, we did huge amounts up in Gisborne, we did Kiwifruit in Gisborne.

"We do Wattie's work, we do PanPac's work - we do a lot for the sawmilling industry. We've done winery stuff in Hawke's Bay, Martinborough, Marlborough, Central Otago and Gisborne."

Some of their well-known buildings include the award-winning Hawke's Bay Opera House, PanPac's sawmill and the Hastings bank buildings for BNZ and Westpac.

New World supermarket bought their offices, which brought a welcome capital injection to the firm.

"Best thing we ever did," he said.

Despite half their projects being outside Hawke's Bay, they were sometimes erroneously perceived as limited in scope, Mr Loughnan said.

"Because we are provincially-based people presume they won't get the same standard or innovation. It's the old story, you are only an expert when you live 100 miles away."

Where they are expert is with energy efficiency, swimming complexes, timber structures and their latest niche - ETFE roofs with inflated layers for insulation.

"People are always asking how strong they are - we have a picture of a mini sitting on one."

The company's greatest obstacle to growth was hiring enough engineers, he said.

"We advertise, we do everything but we can't seem to get any."

Part of the recruitment problem was the higher wages offered in Australia.

"We had one bloke apply from Australia, he was a very experienced Kiwi who wanted to come home, but when we found out what he was getting over there - we couldn't match it.

"I went to Australia recently looking at the pool market. If we could get more design engineers we would be in there tomorrow."