Salute to the winners

Brian Hoffmann (pictured right) from Auckland is used to winning regional titles, but taking home both the National Excavator Operator of the Year and One Day Job trophies had him grinning from ear to ear.

In fact, he was so ecstatic at his success he toured the square in Palmerston North after the awards dinner until the early hours of Sunday Morning with his trophies.

It was also reported that he went to bed that night still hanging on to the trophies one in each hand. He will automatically return next year to the nationals as the defending champion.

In second place was Tim Graham from Waikato/BoP, who also was awarded the Humes Good Bastard Award for his positive attitude over the competition that involved doing that little bit extra to assist both fellow finalists and the officials.

The judges admit the competition was as tough as it gets this year, which was reflected in the overall scoring. The culvert dig on the first day was only just achievable within in the given time, and no one was able to finish the excavation involved in the Contractor magazine One Day Job task, which made up 20 percent of the total score.

Contractors’ Federation executive officer and competition judge Malcolm Abernethy, says most tasks become fine tuned every year by the judges, but new ones have to be included for contestants who were at event the year before.

The event is dependant on dozens of volunteers who contribute their free time to work on setting up these tasks and do the judging, he adds.

“These volunteers give up a whole week from their working year to set the competition up, and it just couldn’t happen without them.” 

Contractor Vol.32  No.3  April 2008
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