Stories
Your stories - and stories
from the Fletcher archives
Plumbing the depths in Port Moresby
In June 1985 the government of PNG announced a state of emergency in the National Capital District, to combat a deteriorating law and order situation. 1,500 police and Defence Force soldiers, half of them armed, hit the streets or Port Moresby to control the criminal gangs, euphemistically called ‘rascals’. The capital quickly had to learn to live with a nightlife curtailed at 9.30 for a 10.30 to 4 am curfew, road blocks and liquor restrictions.
Robbie Humberstone, plumbing supervisor with Fletcher Morobe, was not quick enough. One Friday night, Robbie and his wife Margaret went to a sports club for dinner and a few drinks. The evening started badly, with Robbie in hopeless form on the dart board although Margaret thrashed all corners on the pool table. Under the curfew all bar sales stopped at 9 pm so they decided to go home at 9.30 pm.
A fellow kiwi, DH, invited them to his house at Korobea to have a few drinks and to stay overnight to beat the curfew. They had to follow DH, not knowing exactly where he lived, and found great difficulty keeping up with Moitaka race track speeds. Several hundred metres from their destination, a brown Mazda station wagon full of PNGians pulled alongside and signaled Robbie to stop. Nothing about the car or men identified them as police, and fearing they were mobile rascals, he pressed on. Meanwhile, DH had disappeared down a driveway somewhere ahead.
Robbie was doing sixty by the time he reached the drive and the Mazda disgorged its load. Robbie thought “Hell’s teeth, this is it� and leapt out of the Ute waving a half metre long knife. A police badge was flashed – they were plain clothes CID policemen carrying out random checks.
Robbie’s sigh of relief was short lived as they questioned him on why he tried to outrun them and then leapt out of the Ute yelling and screaming. Screaming? That must have been Margaret! After a lot of explaining (‘tok save’) the police confiscated his knife, checked his license, warned him about speeding and then left them to it.
While all this was happening DH was safely ensconced in his house, gate locked, doors barred, alarms on and security lights blazing. Robbie and Margaret stayed the night as the curfew hour was upon them. But DH was firmly told what he could do with any future invitation!
An Inestimable Contribution
The centenary celebrations this year have had Senior Estimator Stuart Rattenbury reminiscing about his 42 years with Fletcher.
He joined the company straight out of school aged 16 as a QS cadet. A year earlier, his father encouraged him to apply for the QS cadet position after seeing an advert in the newspaper, saying ‘I think that’s going to be a very big company one day, it would probably be worthwhile going and having an interview.’ Unfortunately Stuart missed out on the job. It went to now Commercial Manager Ivan Vuksich. Undeterred, Stuart applied again the following year and was taken on.
In his time with the company, he has worked with many an interesting character. “There were a whole lot of characters. Some of them were rogues, but I guess they were [really] just strong, forceful personalities.� More importantly for Stuart, he was lucky enough to work under some legends in the business. “My first manager here was George Bourke. It took me a long while to realise it [but] I had, by sheer dumb luck, latched onto the best in the business straight-off. He just naturally related to people, whether it was one of his top contract managers or the tea lady. His influence just cascades down through the years. I also have a lot of time for Roger Power. At my long service function a couple of years ago, I paid tribute to Roger [who was retiring at the time]. I said ‘Some people you describe as the fountain of all knowledge; he was the fountain of all wisdom’. He is just such a wise, sage character.�
Stuart also had the pleasure of meeting Sir James I who he describes as a dear old Scots gentleman that “still had a spark of mischief in his eye – the way he created the company, he took enormous risks and did it with huge flair.�
Calculators were not around and computers were a mere fantasy when fresh-faced Stuart started on the job. “It was all brainpower. A lot of the stuff we did – taking quantities off drawings for pricing and so on – was [a] very good grounding.�
He has worked on some of the company’s – and the country’s – largest and most significant projects. “When I started we were probably halfway through the original Auckland Hospital project. That was just a huge, huge project and complex, and I don’t think anybody had been involved with anything like that before.� He was also involved with the Sky City project which, for the period of construction, had the whole country watching. “You’re lucky if you get one like that in your lifetime. It was an unbelievable project – the interest that it generated.� He would have friends intrigued with the project’s progress phoning him up from their offices nearby the site, asking him to explain just how it was being done.
Stuart’s son followed him into the same line of business, and company. Andrew Rattenbury has been with Fletcher for 10 years this year. Like his father, he joined straight out of school under the cadet programme choosing to avoid the ties of a student loan. Although Stuart takes it as a compliment that Andrew has followed him into the same line of work, he encourages him to put his own slant on things. “He’s gone in different directions – he’s more involved in project management; he’s looking after a few jobs, getting a broader, wider picture of the thing. He’s his own man; he’ll go his own way.�
Step change - Jellicoe Wharf for Auckland Harbour Board
In the year of 1950, Sir James Fletcher I received a note from Admiral Cotter, then president of US contractors Merritt-Chapman Scott, whom he had met in Wellington during the war.
Admiral Cotter was interested in joint ventures on New Zealand projects involving marine works, tunnels or submarine pipelines. Merritt-Chapman Scott was then one of the biggest contractors on the US East Coast and was known for brilliant and innovative marine works engineering.
The letter arrived a few months before the Auckland Harbour Board called tenders for a new wharf. Joe Craig (who had built the Wellington Railway Station as a young man) met Cotter in New York to discuss a JV. Another legendary American construction character was called in: George Ferris was president of Raymond Concrete Pile, a major US piling sub-contractor with particular expertise in the sort of foundation work required for the new wharf.
Ferris, urbane and well connected, became another important bridge to American expertise by introducing Jim Fletcher to ‘Mac’ Gilmore, a manufacturer and steelmaker who owned a mini-mill in Portland, Oregon. The firm price and delivery date for reinforcing steel that Fletcher won from Gilmore Steel was crucial in the tender for the wharf job with reinforcing steel being in short supply and extremely expensive.
Fletcher’s first joint venture with major overseas contractors – Fletcher Merritt Raymond – was significant for the company, allowing it to leverage international expertise to move into large-scale engineering projects. The project was profitable, on time and on budget. New construction methods and equipment were introduced – a fascinated public congregated on the waterfront to watch the wharf taking shape with the aid of one of Raymond’s advanced pieces of technology, a patented pile-driving rig.
Jim Fletcher gained confidence from the project because it showed that his company could work with the best, so he and his people felt they could take on much bigger projects. The wharf was seen by the public and by clients as a symbol of Auckland’s dominance of commercial life and of Fletcher’s role in that dominance.
• Completed 29 June 1953.
• 353.8 metres long and 94.5 metres wide.
• Jellicoe import wharf, Waitemata Harbour, Auckland.
• Joint venture with Merritt-Chapman Scott (Overseas) Corporation and Raymond Concrete Pile Co with Raymond Concrete Pile as sponsor, or managing partner.
“This was a complex and technically demanding job, which was delivered in a very competent manner, by a very professional contractor. Of particular note were the sheet and tubular piling operations undertaken from the jack-up barge ‘Tuapapa’. These were significant undertakings in New Zealand terms and were accomplished safely and efficiently by sound planning and construction methodology, a well-trained, capable and motivated workforce and by mobilisation of appropriate plant and equipment.�
Francis Patten
Project Engineer, Northport Limited