Grant was recently appointed as Team Leader Consents with the building consent processing team. 

Born in Invercargill and raised near Clyde, Grant came to the Dunedin City Council in 2008 with advanced trade certificate carpentry and extensive administration and management experience.  Originally working a split role between site inspections and processing building consents, Grant later specialised as a consent officer.

The Team Leader Consents plays a critical role in the day to day operations of the consents team, providing mentoring and coaching to team members and professional advice when required. An average day involves around three hours of meetings, receiving and sending around 60 emails, maybe an hour on the phone and hopefully some time left over to catch up with his staff and do some work.  Grant is currently involved with recruitment for three vacant positions and will ultimately lead a team of fifteen.

In terms of attributes required for the job, you need a good general knowledge of legislation and the technical aspects of building design.  You don’t have to have all the answers, but you have to know where to find them, or at least who to ask if you’re stuck. It helps if you can touch type 50 words per minute while eating a salami sandwich and juggling a variety of computer programmes.  It also helps if you can soak up pressure and constant interruptions while keeping a smile on your face.  It’s early days, but so far, so good…

In his spare time Grant likes (in no particular order), spending time with family, gardening, trout fishing, snow skiing, beer, camping, rock concerts, writing, eating, free diving and pulling other people’s four wheel drives out of bogs.

If he wasn’t a granddad who loved living in Otago and working for the DCC, Grant would like to be a roadie for Black Sabbath. The fact that this year’s tour was called, “The End Tour”, doesn’t bode well. Grant thinks that more realistically he might have been a failed writer with a terrible sense of humour and a broken typewriter. 

Good luck Grant and don’t give up your day job just yet.