Graduate Development Programme

A challenging and significant undertaking assisted by the support and mentoring of Registered Architect and Auckland Studio Architecture Team Leader, Tammy Ashley. Chow:Hill's inhouse Graduate Development programme has been in place since mid-2015 and is always evolving to suit each graduate's requirements and development.

The goal of the program is to expose our graduates to as much experience and many opportunities as possible through both project work and focused Studio discussions, these discussions facilitated through a weekly study group led by graduate Edith Chan and supervised by Tammy. The study sessions are framed around the six key experience areas in which registration applicants must show competence, this includes design and construction activity, practice conduct and office management, ethics and health and safety. This experience is then demonstrated via comprehensive project case studies prepared and submitted by the applicants as part of the registration process.

Given that the best type of learning is often in practice our Team Leaders are focused on offering a range of project types, scale and activities to our Graduates as part of resource and project planning. Graduates are also invited and encouraged to attend various technical presentations and CPD events, with a number of the Team attending and inspired by the recent NZIA in:situ conference.

In this significant stage of career development our graduates are also encouraged to share their design thinking and ideas, this includes regular presentation opportunities at Studio Forums; a chance to share a particular design concept, reference project or source of inspiration. In the Architecture Team meetings, Tammy has installed the tradition of the "Rolling Chair", in which each graduate take on the responsibility of chairing the meeting. The challenge of chairing a group of architects and designers provides a good training/testing ground for their wider project context.

Chow:Hill acknowledges and commends all the hard work and collaboration of our graduate team as they work toward their registration goal and are looking forward to celebrating their imminent successes!