Facilities, Utilities and Transport is what we do.
We plan, build, maintain and operate right through the life of our country’s infrastructure. Operating for 150 years, we’re always on – across 122 locations in Aotearoa New Zealand.
It’s engaging and rewarding work, not least because of the diverse mix of people we work with every day.
Be different, be Downer
No one achieves anything ground-breaking by doing the same. Different is more than just where you come from or what you look like. Different is in the way you think, the actions you take and the unique perspective you as an individual can bring to the table.
Our differences are the backbone of our strength. They’re what allow us to solve challenges, not run away from them, forge long-lasting relationships, and build a better Aotearoa.
For over 150 years, we develop, build and maintain some of this country’s most iconic infrastructure that contributes to the way we all live and work. But what makes the difference and shapes our success as a company is the melting pot of amazing people from all walks of life. Different strengths, skills and perspectives, all working together.
Roles For Everyone
Our ambition is to build a better future for Aotearoa. It takes the passion and the efforts of ten thousand people across the country to bring it to life. We are people like you, and we make change happen every day in our local communities. We offer a wide range of opportunities for development and growth – facilitating something different for everyone. We recognise that not one size fits all, and for you to thrive, we provide a multitude of support and pathways to suit.
Transport & Infrastructure
Downer keeps New Zealand moving by delivering transport solutions. Whether it’s road maintenance, asset management, digital engineering, or a large infrastructure project, we have experts on the ground all over the country.
As a leading utilities provider in New Zealand, we are a partner of choice for cities, rural communities and industries, providing exceptional delivery throughout the whole asset lifecycle.
The Facilities business combines the strength of Downer, Hawkins and Spotless to provide whole-of-life solutions for customers across Aotearoa. We design, build, maintain and operate social infrastructure, and offer industry-leading future-focused solutions.
Kickstart your career at Downer. We offer a great Cadet Programme, which will help you to get the experience you need to succeed as an engineer. Here at Downer, we view every cadet as a potential leader. In fact, some of our current leaders started their careers as a cadet, this is a great opportunity to earn while you learn and grow your career.
Our programme takes between 2.5 to 4 years to complete, depending on the academic status at the time of commencing the programme. Every cadet has their own mentor to support study and work placement learnings and our dedicated programme managers oversee and support their progress. This programme offers a structured rotation plan that ensures a full range of roading and construction knowledge and experiences.
The programme includes regular meetings to share experiences with other cadets and connect with our wider young professional community. We also provide an opportunity to expand your network with peers and give you access to business managers and our executive leaders.
During this programme, Downer provides financial and leave allocation to support academic achievement and permanent entry-level engineering roles will be offered upon successful completion of the programme.
Applications are now open – apply for our cadetship now and meet some of our previous cadets below.
The Downer Summer Intern Programme provides engineering students with a structured 12-week programme of hands-on job training and work experience and an introduction to the world of contracting. It’s also an excellent pathway to our Graduate programme.
Working as part of a road maintenance crew or supporting a tender submission, our summer interns are expected to get involved, gain a greater understanding of the industry and make a contribution to the business.
We are looking for future leaders who are keen to demonstrate their ability, want to develop their leadership skills, are self-motivated and enjoy being challenged every day. Interns who prove themselves may be offered full-time employment in the Downer graduate programme or be invited back for the following summer if they are still a student.
Downer has projects throughout New Zealand so ideally, candidates need to be agile, willing to move to projects where their skill set is needed, and keen to face any challenge to gain the right experiences to take their career forward.
Applications are now closed for our 2022/2023 programme, but stay tuned later in the year when we release more information for 2023/2024!
Graduate Programme
Rotations through the business
Our Emerging Professionals strategy is about developing a group of future leaders who could potentially take on a range of leadership roles. We know the best way to do that is by exposing you to the wider business before you specialize in one area. Rotations into different business communities under different managers are key to your development. Currently, our Graduates are working across New Zealand and the Pacific region and are developing technical, commercial and personal skills.
Young Professionals Mentoring Programme
Downer has an established network of mentors across our business communities. As a Graduate, you will be partnered with an experienced senior leader who has time to meet with you on a regular basis to help you set future career goals and find your way as a graduate.
Young Professionals Conference
Every year we invite Graduates to participate in the Young Professionals Conference. This is a two-day event that incorporates personal and professional development, along with some great team building and networking opportunities. Our Executive leadership team also attend and join in the activities throughout the couple of days.
Downer recognises the importance of graduates contributing to the Downer strategic plan now as they will be leading the Downer of the future. Our last conference “Be The Wave” focused on the waves of change in our business, our industry and our society and taught our graduates tools that help them to not only survive but thrive in times of change.
Engineering Forums
We know professional registration is important and encourage our graduates to become Chartered Professional Engineers through EngNZ. We run a series of online technical forums alongside in-person forums across New Zealand to help you in getting there.
Forums are designed for our graduates to bring their portfolios of evidence for review and receive feedback and guidance from Engineering NZ-recognized assessors on their paperwork. Managers are also encouraged to attend and provide support to the wider Young Professionals network.
The forums are a mix of education, informal networking and plenty of pizza!
Empowering People
At Downer people come first. Through our training and development initiatives, we foster a culture of collaboration, communication, and innovation to empower our team to take on the future with confidence. This includes study assistance, mentoring, secondments across the business and training available in over 50 different courses. Many people who start out with us as apprentices, cadets or university graduates have gone on to become supervisors, project managers, engineers and business leaders.
Inspiring leaders programme
Three levels of leadership training for managers, supervisors and frontline forepersons, leading to a national certificate in business and first-line management.
Frontline leaders’ workshops
Focused on the development of essential leadership skills. Courses include leadership essentials new manager 101, and advanced leadership.
Management qualifications
National certificates in either construction trades (supervisor) level 4 or infrastructure works (single site supervision) Level 4.
WILD – Women in leadership at Downer
This programme is designed as a collaborative learning opportunity for the development of women leaders in Downer.
Road to Success
Road to Success is designed to help our people with whole-of-life skills. Financial, health and wellbeing literacy are foundations of the program as well as completing company documents and navigating digital literacy and new technology.
Train the Trainer
Train the Trainer is an in-house program giving employees who present information either internally or externally skills to engage with their audiences.
People Focused Initiatives
Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our people
We have implemented a range of initiatives in recent years to change the conversation around mental health and to empower our people with strategies to not only support their own mental health and wellbeing but also to support their friends, families and colleagues. For instance, our mental first aid officers programme enables employees to be trained to provide initial informal support to other employees in the workplace. They complement formal support services, like our Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP).
Lifestyle
We are committed to creating a dynamic work environment that inspires employees and allows them to best integrate work with other important things in their life. We help our people achieve this with flexible working, leave entitlements, health check-ups, discount offers and more.
Recognition
We support our people to always be their best and are constantly looking for innovative ways to help them own their future. With Own’d, our recognition programme, we celebrate our people who have owned the difference they bring to our team and have made a difference in one of our four pillars – Safety, Delivery, Relationships and Thought Leadership.
Safety
We pride ourselves on having a strong safety culture because we care about our people and our communities. We remain focused on ensuring that all our people return home safely to their families at the end of their working day.
At Downer, sustainability means sustainable and profitable growth, providing value to our customers, delivering our services in a safe and environmentally responsible manner, helping our people to be better and advancing the communities in which we operate. Downer’s holistic approach to sustainability is summarised in the diagram below. Our commitments to sustainability are outlined in our policies.
A core element of Downer’s sustainability approach is to focus on our customers’ success. Our core operating philosophy, ‘Relationships creating success’, encapsulates this theme.
Downer operates in sectors that are closely connected to the investment that is being driven by population growth and urbanisation. These sectors include roads, rail, light rail, other public transport, power, gas, water, telecommunications, health, education, defence and other government sectors.
These sectors are served by Downer’s Urban Services businesses – Transport, Utilities, and Facilities and Asset Services. These businesses have demonstrated strength and resilience, hold market-leading positions and attractive medium-term and long-term growth opportunities.
They have a high proportion of government and government-related contracts and a capital light, services-based business model generating lower risk, more predictable revenues and cash flows. Downer’s Urban Services strategy delivers many environmental and social benefits including a move to lower capital intensive and lower carbon activities which supports Downer’s decarbonisation pathway.
Downer is proud of the role we play in creating more sustainable cities and improving the quality of life in Australia and New Zealand. We are also heavily involved in providing services for social infrastructure such as schools, universities, hospitals, public housing and other areas of government such as defence.
Our customers trust us to deliver these services, which will have a direct impact on their customers every day.
With our services impacting millions of lives every day, the sustainability of our operations is paramount – for our people, our partners, our shareholders, our customers and their customers.
We deliver these services while managing the impacts of our activities on the environment and communities in which we operate, and working collaboratively with our supply chain. We understand that our ability to do this is fundamental to Downer’s long-term success.
Our Videos
Cadetships Programme
Our Videos
Meet Project Manager, Manoj
Meet Apprentice Service Technicia, Val
Working in our Telco team: Peter Scott
Working in our Energy team: Julia Harrison
Paul McClean - Transport
Māori Leadership Programmes
This Māori Leadership Programme is about recognising and developing future leaders within our business.
Working alongside Te Puni Kōkiri, the programme continues to increase the participation levels of our Māori workforce to enhance Māori representation at all levels of business. By encouraging the career progression of our Māori employees, we encourage them to become influential leaders and role models. The programme is held in a marae setting with a focus of Māori tikanga (protocol). It helps participants to embrace their heritage, being proud of who they are and step into the leadership space.
This programme has won the following awards:
2016 Diversity Works NZ Emerging Diversity & Inclusion Award
2018 HRNZ Corporate Social Responsibility Award
2019 Deloitte’s Top 200 Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award
2020 HRNZ Diversity and Inclusion Award
2021 Transpower Hauora Wellbeing Initiative Award
MĀORI SCHOOL LEAVERS WHAKATIPU TETEKURA
Whakatipu Tētēkura is a programme for Māori school leavers at risk of becoming NEETs (not in education, employment or training). This unique programme comprises a series of marae and classroom-based residential workshops, pastoral care and a supported career development pathway. Participants are permanently employed with Downer, supported through our In-Work Success programme. Downer was a finalist for our Whakatipu Tētēkura programme in the ‘2019 Diversity Awards NZ’ for ‘Tomorrow’s Workforce’. Acknowledging the place Tangata Whenua hold in Aotearoa.
