Top award for “natural problem solver”

If you take a drive around Wellington’s CBD and its stunning waterfront, you’ll see many iconic buildings that Adam Thornton DistFEngNZ had a significant hand in. The structural engineer, who in March this year received the Fulton-Downer Gold Medal, has been a prominent structural engineer in the capital for 50 years. Renowned for his innovative engineering knowledge and leadership on projects as diverse as the Museum Hotel relocation, Wellington Regional Hospital, Clyde Quay Wharf and Tākina convention centre, many of the buildings he has worked on involved technical firsts for New Zealand.

Adam says he was pointed in the direction of engineering due to his strength in maths and physics at school.

“My whole family is that way inclined,” he says, “My father was a very practical man, as are my children. We are natural problem solvers.”

It was only after he graduated and started working in the industry that he realised how much he had found his niche. “I found it by accident.”

Early in his career, an employer sparked Adam’s passion for engineering leadership and improving industry standards. In 1986 he established Dunning Thornton with Cris Dunning and the business has since provided structural engineering consultancy services for projects in Wellington and throughout the country.

He has held numerous key positions in New Zealand and internationally, including with ACE New Zealand, Engineering New Zealand and the International Federation of Consulting Engineers. Additionally, Adam made a significant contribution to the development of Producer Statements, particularly as lead author of Practice Note 1.

“The need for this arose from diversity in producer statement practice, along with significant deregulation and the uptake of new technologies and building materials during the nineties,” he says.

“The government introduced the Building Act in 1991 and during the same period a number of major changes occurred within the building industry. Prior to that, councils had engineering departments that would vet building consents, but in the nineties a lot of regulatory technical expertise was lost through decentralisation.”

He says that the industry was characterised by designer overconfidence and acceptance of producer statements without adequate scrutiny.

“As a result, we had some very poor outcomes such as the leaky buildings fiasco, which was a great disaster for the country, costing billions of dollars to councils and building owners.”

He continues: “There are 67 different building consent authorities in New Zealand and thousands of practitioners, and many were doing their own thing. Following the revised Building Act in 2004, we realised the engineering profession needed some guidelines to improve consistency of practice and to reinstate confidence in producer statements.”

The standard Engineering New Zealand/ACE New Zealand producer statements are now universally accepted across the country and have become a key tool for demonstrating compliance with the Building Code, he says.

One of Adam’s favourite projects was the relocation of Wellington’s Museum Hotel, for which he earned accolades here and abroad for the innovative way in which the 3,000-tonne, four-storey building was moved along and across Cable Street on railway bogies, to make room for Te Papa.

“The solution we arrived at was a consequence of the fact the government was stripping out disused railway lines, so the bogies, railway lines and bridge beams happened to be available.”

He cites Clyde Quay Wharf as one of his most challenging projects. The building included an under-wharf basement carpark, an engineering challenge thought to be the first of its kind in Australasia. More than 200 new piles were installed through the existing wharf, and 32 concrete slabs, each weighing 90 tonnes, were cast above the high-tide level and lowered into place using hydraulic rams to form a 200-metre long car park, which is half-submerged at high tide.

“It was an extremely complex project. It required considerable collaboration with the contractor and with numerous other engineering disciplines and took two years to get resource consent.”

From the slide rule to AI, predominance of reinforced concrete to steel and timber, ecological nightmares to the focus on environmentally friendly buildings, Adam says much has changed in the industry since he started out.

“Also, the sophistication of design,” he adds.

“The design complexity of modern buildings now, enabled by powerful computer analysis and design programs, is a huge shift from the simply modelled buildings of the seventies and eighties.”

Regulations and seismic knowledge have also greatly changed, and around this he offers a caution.

“For structural engineers the increasing knowledge about seismic hazard and building performance means that almost every building currently being consented is destined to become considered as ‘sub-par’ within a relatively short time. We keep raising the bar, which at some point must become questionable, in a business sense, for New Zealand Inc.” He says engineers need to be aware of the wider impacts of such continuous change. “There are not many countries that have had the number of changes to standards that we have had in the past 40 years, including seismic regulations, new materials, new loading standards, and so forth.”

Adam believes one of the biggest challenges for structural engineers is having to adapt to constant change, and while there are “many brilliant engineers in New Zealand” there are also those who are not keeping up with technological changes and compliance requirements.

He believes the country needs more structural engineers who are both technically proficient and able to see the bigger picture.

“We must develop professionals that have strong consultancy skills, can communicate effectively with a range of stakeholders, can understand the needs of clients and other design disciplines, and know the complexities of running a successful business.”

Adam retired as a Director of Dunning Thornton in 2017 but still works there as a senior engineer and mentor. His current workload predominately involves acting as an expert witness when an engineer’s work comes under scrutiny.

He appreciates that the Fulton-Downer Gold Medal recognises his contribution to the practice of engineering as a whole.

“The recognition from my peers is the most important part of it, acknowledging the work I’ve put into the profession.”

But for his technical expertise, Adam considers the greatest endorsement of his skills to be in the doing.

“If builders like building your designs and clients find them affordable, then to me, they’re signals that you’re doing it right.”

This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of EG magazine.