ARTIFEX ENGINEERING

Project Delivery Experts

Who are we?

We are an established business owned and operated by group of experienced project delivery professionals dedicated to delivering exceptional projects within our local Hawke’s Bay community and across New Zealand.

Our strength lies in finding simplicity within your complex challenges and problems. We listen and take time to understand your business needs. We then use our diverse range of cross industry skills, experience and relationships to create the optimal solution for your business and we deliver it exceedingly well.

Our Values.

We revel in Complexity.

We thrive in the most challenging projects—whether it's multi-discipline coordination, new technology implementation, OEM and balance-of-plant integration, brownfield operations, or navigating logistical and scheduling constraints.

We are Project Leaders, not Administrators.

We lead projects, we drive an outcome, we optimise the value of your spend.

We are not “post box” project managers, just passing paperwork between the customer and the contractor, ticking the standard boxes as we go. We are nimble and responsive, but we will apply rigour where the risks require us to do so.

We take a risk based approach.

Every project is different and has its own set of unique risks and consequences. As we work with you through each phase of your project we focus on the most significant risks for that phase. It creates the certainty of outcome you need.

We understand Operations.

Many of our staff have worked within operating plant as plant engineers, maintenance managers or operators.

Operability, maintainability, lifecycle costs, energy efficiency, reliability, brown fields construction, outage planning and the like are always front of mind while we are designing and planning.

We understand Construction.

Construction is our thing. Its where the job is won and lost. Every member of our team has worked in construction, and are always considering cost, constructability, schedule, and safety—whether managing works in the field or designing solutions in the office.

Our Leadership Team

MIKE FINLAYSON

Managing Director | Project Director
B.E. (Hons) Civil, CPEngNZ

  • Mike’s career to date has been dominated with delivering and supporting complex industrial and processing infrastructure.

    After graduating with an honours degree in civil engineering the first 10 years of Mike’s career was mostly involved in delivering a wide range of projects in the oil and gas industry across the globe based out of London, Aberdeen and New Plymouth. Initially working as a structural engineer designing offshore oil and gas facilities, he has progressed into project and construction management and project governance.

    Upon returning to New Zealand Mike has had a successful career building and operating businesses that deliver large design-build projects to industrial and energy businesses. He has been actively involved delivering projects across a wide range of industries including food and beverage, dairy, wine, timber, energy, power, alternative energy and renewables.

    Mike has extensive experience and capability in governance, having sat on the New Zealand Leadership team of a multi-national engineering delivery company for over 15 years as well as being on the board, including a period as chair, of a significant national fuel storage and distribution business.

    Having founded Artifex Engineering in 2020, Mike is still very hands on and he works actively as a project director on larger and more complex projects.

ROGER HAWKEN

Operations Director | Project Director
B.E. (Hons) Mechanical, NZCE Mechanical

  • Roger started his career studying NZCE and working in precision machining and toolmaking before completing his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at Canterbury University. Roger’s first 20 years was working inside industrial processing and manufacturing industries including steel production, pulp and paper research and plastics, holding multiple asset management, shutdown management, operational management, and capital implementation roles. He made the change to consulting in 2007 taking on project management, project governance, sector lead and branch management positions for Worley before leaving to become a founding director and shareholder of Artifex Engineering in 2021.

    His experience in processing and manufacturing is wide and includes FMCG (food processing, bottling plants, fruit packhouses, packing lines), steel processing, packaging, pulp and paper, fertiliser, coal and wood processing.

    His specialty is in industrial plant, either design and construction of greenfield plants or the more complex brownfield multidisciplinary projects where the implementation of upgrades or capital projects needs to occur in and around operational plant where any downtime needs to be carefully planned and minimised.

    Career highlights are many, and include managing the design and build of the greenfield Nature’s Flame wood pellet plant in Taupo, and leading the recovery of Pan Pac’s pulp mill, following the devastating effects of Cyclone Gabrielle.

Connect with our team to explore how we can support your next project.