Trowbridge is passing on a passion for engineering
Greg Trowbridge talks to Helen Harvey about passing it on.
Greg Trowbridge is working in his big tin shed. It’s noisy and dusty and he’s loving it.
Dressed in shorts and boots he jokes he’s never had a ‘job’. ‘‘This isn’t work. This is fun.’’ So much fun that he spends a lot of his time and money running an after school club for high school students trying to share the passion he has for inventing, designing and building stuff.
He’s trying to encourage the kids to think outside the box, rather than follow a process, he says.
‘‘We want entrepreneurs, you know. We want smart kids, passionate kids, that want to build something. And we’ll help them get there.’’
Trowbridge, 53, started his business Falcon Engineering, so named because he had a falcon ute at the time, in Inglewood when he was 25. But his shed is in New Plymouth.
The club started off in the workshop at New Plymouth Boys’ High School, but there wasn’t the space to house the bigger projects the boys wanted to make, he says.
‘‘This place became available so I bought it. My wife calls it my very expensive hobby.’’
His hobby started when his two sons were students at Boys’ High.
They made a little tool box, but they were too embarrassed to show him, he says. So, he called the school and had a chat to the deputy principal.
‘‘I said, ‘can we have a little discussion about your technical block? I’m either going to help you fix it or I’m going to burn it down,’’ he says laughing.
The school accepted his offer to help and he started the club and helped the boys with projects and with welding, he says.
‘‘We pulled the old benches. Then guys came up with money and they bought some steel and we designed new work benches. The young guys they drew it then they made it. They loved it.’’
But after a while Trowbridge decided to find his own building, so boys and girls could come from other high schools, he says
And he pays his workers to help with the kids, because that way he is in charge, he says.
‘‘If I pay them I don’t have to follow any rules, I’m not good at that.’’
He thought he’d have to run it in a structured way, but he doesn’t, he says.
‘‘My wife’s a teacher. She said, ‘you’re going to p... everybody off’. I said, ‘I do that anyway as a matter of course’.’’
Between 15 and 20 kids come along to the club which is on two nights a week, but with sports practices and other commitments the club is on most nights.
‘‘We have a lot of kids who have really good skills and we have kids that don’t fit in, like me.’’
He went to Opunake High School and left when he was 15 because he didn’t fit into the mould, he says.
School wasn’t for him so he worked on the family farm in Kaponga, where he first started welding aged seven - it’s in his blood - before moving to Inglewood to help build rotary cowsheds.
‘‘I travelled overseas at 20 and the longest I was unemployed was three days and that’s because I had a hangover. You just walk in, give anything a shot. But I don’t see that in a lot of our younger people.
‘‘Then I came back to New Zealand in 1987 went and worked at Ajax Fasteners and within eight months I was maintenance foreman. I was 23.’’
Along the way he did an apprenticeship in Taranaki and night school in Wellington.
Back in Inglewood he started his own business building quarry equipment, he says.
‘‘And crushers. We got into wood processing, glue laminating, so we’ve done work for Taranaki sawmills. We build a lot of stuff for Clelands, we build acoustic tools for forest research in Rotorua. We’ve sold tools all round the world. Then the oil industry came along.’’
He has got patents in the United States on some of the things he has designed, he says.
’’Kiwis, we’re known for our number eight wire [mentality]. We need to be innovative.’’
He would like to hire young people to send off around the world, but they’re hard to find, he says.
‘‘They go to uni, to Canterbury, to do engineering. They are taught this is how it is, but they’re not taught - how could we develop something better?’’
They’re taught process, which is good they need that, but they need to learn to look outside the box, he says.
‘‘One client came in with a tractor and wanted to fit a blade on it, so the boys made all the parts and cut out and drew parts. Little projects like that that people can bring in.’’
The kids come up with their own ideas of things they want to build, such as mustang signs. One wanted to build a drift trike and put a motor on it.
‘‘Another guy built his dad a waxing thing for his beehives. So, we just help them with whatever.’’
One young guy wanted to build a scooter, he says.
‘‘He did a really good job. We looked at how he could find the wheels as well, so it’s not just the engineering, it’s about the whole process. And to make sure it’s finished nice so your grandparents will be pleased. That’s really important.’’
Trowbridge is looking at reaching more kids and trying to set up a programme that might be able to be implemented in other schools.
A group of kids in his club are looking at building an electric car. It’s important to show they can actually build something, he says.
While he just shrugs when asked how much time and money the club costs him, his work had been rewarded with Trowbridge being named as one of Taranaki’s Kiwibank Local Heroes.
His daughter Elly, 14, nominated him, which was special, he says.
‘‘I’m pretty embarrassed. And very humble.’’
But he believes in ‘passing it on’ and is focusing on helping one young person at a time.
‘‘My Granddad and Dad told me I have to leave the place in better shape than I found it.’’
I'm either going to help you fix it or I'm going to burn it down."
Greg Trowbridge