Personal build · 2023–2026
Diamond Harbour container home
A shipping-container home taken from design coordination through engineering, consenting, procurement, fabrication, services and construction — with substantial hands-on work on the tools as well as project leadership.
Project gallery
Project photography, design, field imagery and digital capture
Role
Project lead & hands-on contributor
Diamond Harbour, New Zealand
Challenge
An unconventional building system created tightly coupled structural, architectural, geotechnical, fabrication, services and site constraints, with limited room for assumptions to stay unresolved.
Outcome
The project progressed from concept and consenting through physical delivery into an occupied home, combining formal professional coordination with practical problem-solving on site.
Why this project matters
This is the clearest example of how I work when there is nowhere to hide behind a project plan. The build required design decisions, engineering coordination, consenting, procurement and contractor management — but it also required me to learn unfamiliar practical skills and solve physical problems directly.
My role
I coordinated the project while also contributing significant hands-on labour. That included learning container-specific fabrication constraints, cutting openings, welding, sanding and preparation, survey set-out using a total station, electrical pre-wiring, structural assembly tasks and general site work.
I also used DroneDeploy to capture and inspect the site digitally, applying the same automated aerial-survey and 3D-modelling capability I had previously used professionally on the Ministry of Education small-schools programme. The resulting 3D site model helped me understand the steep site, surrounding terrain and project context spatially rather than relying only on conventional photographs and drawings.
That combination matters because it creates a different relationship with delivery risk. Drawings, tolerances, sequencing and access constraints are not abstract when you have personally had to make them work on site.
The system
The home combines multiple shipping-container modules with conventional building elements and a steep site. Delivery therefore depended on a chain of coordinated disciplines:
- architectural design and building consent;
- structural and geotechnical engineering;
- foundations and survey set-out;
- drone-based site capture and 3D spatial review;
- container fabrication and structural modification;
- windows, cladding and weatherproofing;
- electrical, drainage and mechanical services; and
- contractor sequencing, procurement and quality follow-up.
What this demonstrates
The project shows persistence, technical curiosity and execution. I am comfortable moving from coordination meetings and professional design documentation to the practical detail of how something will actually be fabricated, installed, tested and finished.
That is the same mindset I bring to professional programmes: understand the whole system, get close enough to the detail to expose weak assumptions, and keep working the problem until the outcome exists in the real world.