Innovator scales new heights

Rock Control employee Paul Kitson at work high up a cliff-face with the drilling rigs used to stabilise banks. PHOTO/200913WCSPROCK CONTROL1

In this second of our series on winners from the 2013 Wanganui Business Awards, business reporter John Maslin looks at a young man who has taken innovation to a different level.

Abseiling down cliff faces with an industrial-sized drilling machine at your side isn't everybody's idea of work but for Andrew Kitson it's something he's good at and it's something that's getting him work all around the country.

Two years ago Mr Kitson created Rock Control, a company specialising in stabilising the countryside, from small retaining walls to major roadside cuttings to keep the bank above in place.

But his success in the real world earned his company the award for outstanding innovation at the 2013 Wanganui Business Awards.

He said he was surprised to get the award "because I didn't go for that one. I entered in the best new business category".

But the judges were impressed with his business calling it the "quintessential innovative organisation".

They said based on Mr Kitson's knowledge and entrepreneurial skills, a company had been created that providing "stabilisation in adverse environments".

The 28-year-old had worked in this environment for five years before branching out on his own.

"It's essentially rock stabilisation, rockfall protection, construction jobs, anything like that we do it," he said.

Born and educated in Wanganui, Mr Kitson did an economics degree at Canterbury University but found his calling in working in a much earthier environment.

"Everyone thinks I'm an engineer but I'm not."

Although the company is based in Wanganui its work is everywhere but local. It's taken in contracts in Wellington, Tauranga, Whangarei and now Christchurch.

As part of the rebuild in the quake-ravaged city he has work for at least the next two years and most of it with the city council.

"We did a big job on the summit of the Rimutaka hill road. That was the first big job that got the company out there."

He has a "mountain" of specialist drilling gear, most of it imported from Italy and the United Kingdom.

"We do abseiling work as well to get some jobs completed. Like the high battered banks in the Manawatu Gorge. We haven't worked there but we've done work like that.

"It involves abseiling down the cliff and drilling holes, putting in steel rods and grouting those in before we lay mesh over the top of that to stabilise rock faces.

"We're doing the same of thing in Christchurch but in dirt there, putting the mesh up and spraying it with a concrete mix. Sometimes it involves putting up gabion walls too."

Looking ahead, Mr Kitson wants to grow the business and take on full-time staff.