Hamish Tocher

While studying Civil Engineering, Hamish Tocher started Heritage Now, a blog that in his words supplements the study programme set out by the Bachelor of Engineering. It’s also been an excuse to get inside some of Auckland’s most fascinating buildings and get an idea of what it’s like to be on site with heritage buildings.

“Getting out to site has been really useful for understanding the profession a bit more, and it's something that I know a lot of other students who have come on site visits have really enjoyed and appreciated it,” Hamish says. “I think there's a real interest from Civil Engineering students about getting out to site and seeing real jobs.”

“As undergrads, we don't really deal with existing buildings, so it was great to have a way of getting to see how that existing building work happens,” Hamish says. “It is quite different because you are constrained by what is already on site. You don't have a blank slate. How often do you really have a blank slate?”

It’s these constraints that often dictate the work of engineers tasked with keeping heritage buildings functional and safe and exist as very real boundaries they have to respect when taking this work on. Hamish believes there are concerns for Civil Engineers as well when it comes to securing the future of older buildings, beyond their physical traits.

“Whatever engineering solution you come up with that you might think is optimal for the building, needs to be filtered through an understanding of, [not only] how it's going to affect the visual look of the building, but it also needs to be filtered through an understanding of why the building is important, what kind of cultural purpose does the building serve, and why it is considered to be significant. The engineering should then serve the end of preserving and maintaining those aspects of the building.”

Hamish describes restoring heritage as an ongoing process, one that should evolve as new solutions are devised so that buildings - no matter how old - can remain current.

“Another interesting thing is that it should be reversible, or it should be as reversible as possible, because we know that technology changes,” Hamish explains. “What we'd quite like to do is say, well we used to do things this way, because it's the best way we knew how at the time, now we've got this new technique, let's take out the old and retrofit and put in a new one, and hopefully we haven't lost too many original materials.”

Hamish believes that civil engineers have a duty to acknowledge more than just a building’s material value, a fact he believes is becoming increasingly important

“In the post-christchurch era there's this real pressure on building owners and it's especially true in the small towns where the rental incomes are not massive. They're not able to do a million dollar refit of a little shop in a small town. But those small towns, or those buildings in those small towns on the main street, create the sense of place in that town. And if we don't, as a profession, sort that out, we're going to lose that material history.”