Employees at Beca are actively encouraged to expand their skills in all directions to fulfil their potential.
Kathryn has over 30 years experience in the High Voltage electrical industry in New Zealand. A graduate of Canterbury University, Kathryn spent over 11 years working for New Zealand Electricity before it was corporatized in 1986. During this time she specialised in Power System Protection and completed the correspondence course in this specialist field run by the Electricity Council in the UK. She then worked as a Consultant Protection Engineer for Design Power for over 10 years before joining Beca in 1998, firstly as a Senior Protection Consultant and in the last 3 years as Technical Director - Protection.
During her career to date, Kathryn has worked through the evolution of protection Relays, starting with Electromechanical then Static and now extremely complex and powerful Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) types. With the current trends of IED type protection relays now also being the data gathering and control devices for the primary equipment, Kathryn offers valuable knowledge in the specialised and highly complex field of Protection Engineering.
Kathryn has completed numerous projects as a Consultant Engineer in the transmission, generation and distribution markets. She was recently the Job Director and Lead Protection Engineer for Transpower’s Greenfield Ohinewai breaker and a half substation which used the latest breaker and a half protection and control scheme. This was a very challenging project where the protection design had to evolve as the project proceeded and the timeframe was tight.
Projects Kathryn has also been involved include the protection system design for wind farm type generation projects including Meridian’s Te Apiti, White Hill and West Wind site. She has undertaken the protection design co-ordination for generator Grid connections such as the Te Apiti wind farm and the Whirinaki dry year generation.
Training junior and intermediate engineers at Beca in “The Art and Science of Protection Engineering” is another aspect Kathryn enjoys with her role at Beca. She has also taught a one semester course in 2006 and 2007 on Power System Protection to third professional year students as a Guest Lecturer at the University of Canterbury Electrical Engineering School.