Robin (Bob) Kingston (1926–2023)

In the 1950s, Bob Kingston grew consulting firm Kingston Reynolds Thom and Allardice (KRTA) to become New Zealand’s first fully multi-disciplinary consulting service, offering expertise in engineering, architecture, planning and quantity surveying. In the 1960s, Bob began exporting consulting services and, in the 1970s and 1980s, established KRTA as an internationally recognised source of geothermal engineering expertise.

Early years

Bob Kingston was born in Auckland on 11 June 1926. He went to St Heliers Primary School and later to Seddon Memorial Technical College in Symonds Street, Auckland. From a young age he was driven to achieve to rise above living in poverty. His daughter recalled her father’s stories of going to bed hungry, having only one pair of shoes and dreaming of one day having enough coins in his pocket that he didn’t know how much was there. He studied hard and was a top student. He was also an accomplished cornet and trumpet player, gifted swimmer and athlete.

At Seddon Memorial Technical College Bob studied engineering. After graduating in the mid-1940s he joined engineering consultancy, Jones and Adams, as a cadet civil engineer. Stanley W Jones and Ralph Adams had established the firm in 1915 and were by this time noted civil engineers and bridge designers.

Beginning of Kingston Reynolds Thom and Allardice (KRTA)

Jones and Adams invited Bob to join as a partner, and the firm became Jones Adams and Kingston in 1951. Ex-Ministry of Works architect, Ian Reynolds, joined as a partner in 1955. Jones and Adams retired in 1957, and civil engineer David Thom joined as a partner. In 1962, ex-Ministry of Works structural engineer Neil Allardice joined as a partner. The company was now the multi-disciplinary consulting firm – Kingston Reynolds Thom and Allardice (later KRTA). The firm incorporated all the skills necessary for any project under one roof – architecture, planning, engineering (geotechnical, civil, structural, electrical, mechanical), and quantity surveying. A testing laboratory was established to support engineering investigations. By the 1980s Bob was Chair of KRTA and the firm had grown to 200 employees.

International projects

Driven by a strong desire to overcome the ups and downs of the New Zealand market, Bob led KRTA into the export of its consulting engineering and architectural services. In 1968 he began to search for work abroad, initially in fields like building design, in which the practice had its greatest strengths. There was, however, intense competition from larger international consultants in fields like university building and hospital design. It became plain that a special skill was needed. For New Zealand this was represented by geothermal technology, but most of the expertise resided in the Ministry of Works and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Bob approached the Commissioner of Works and proposed that KRTA could act as lead consultants, allowing skilled staff to be seconded on an ‘as required’ basis.

For the next two decades Bob worked with sustained energy and persistence to develop and manage relationships with major offshore clients. Under his leadership KRTA became the go-to consultant internationally for geothermal exploration and development. The company worked on developments in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, USA, Jamaica, Canada, and Papua New Guinea. The impact of these developments on local communities was considerable. Not only did the projects provide direct work for locals, but the existence of power generation capacity encouraged industries to locate nearby, boosting the local economies.

In the Philippines, from 1968 to 1986, KRTA engineers worked on three geothermal steam fields and power plants, totalling some 340MW of power generation capacity. Later work extended the installed power generation capacity in the Philippines beyond 800MW and brought geothermal power to some 10 million people throughout the Central Philippines.

A notable non-geothermal project was a 600-bed university teaching hospital strategically located in Khon Kaen, North-East Thailand. The Thai government wished to establish a world-class facility to encourage development in the region. The hospital, known as Srinagarind Hospital, was built between 1976 and 1983. KRTA carried out all services from greenfield site exploration to commissioning and handover of all elements of this complex – architectural planning and design, civil, geotechnical, structural, mechanical, electrical, and quantity surveying, construction monitoring and contract administration. The firm’s services were funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. At the time it was New Zealand’s largest ever overseas aid project, negotiated at the outset by Bob.

In New Zealand KRTA’s client list included – Central Government agencies, notably the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aid programme; NZ Co-Operative Dairy Company; Bank of New Zealand; Auckland and Victoria Universities; Fisher & Paykel; NZ Steel; Air New Zealand; Harbour Boards, and Local Authorities. Notable New Zealand projects included – The School of Engineering, School of Architecture and other buildings at University of Auckland; Rankine Brown Library and several other buildings for Victoria University of Wellington; Air New Zealand Maintenance base at Auckland Airport; factory buildings for Fisher and Paykel; production line buildings for New Zealand Steel.

Bob retired from KRTA in 1986.

Awards and recognition

In 2004 Bob was elected Distinguished Fellow of IPENZ (now Engineering New Zealand) in recognition of his leadership in the profession and advancement of engineering practice.

Source

This biography is an edited version of an obituary compiled July 2023 by David Hopkins, a former director of KRTA and Head of its Buildings Division, with input from Bob Kingston’s daughter, Gill Kingston, and from former KRTA colleagues, Norman Firth, Denys Oldham, and Peter Barnett, KRTA Philippines Manager from 1978 to 1998.

Read the full obituary by David Hopkins.

Later history of KRTA

Following Bob’s retirement as Chairman the firm merged with noted Wellington firm, Morrison Cooper, to form Kingston Morrison, which later became part of a large Australian-based firm Sinclair Knight Merz, SKM. SKM subsequently became part of Jacobs, a large international consulting engineering firm which continues to offer services in geothermal energy development, with its core expertise in New Zealand.