An immeasurable career – Neil Sutherland retires

Neil’s Story: A Surveyor Who Helped Shape the Profession

The McKenzie & Co team said farewell to Neil Sutherland, who is heading into retirement as a Surveyor, we are proud to have been Neil’s last place of employment after a 55 year career in the industry. Neil could write a book on his career, but here is an abreviated version of his journey.

When Neil walked into Survey School in 1970, fresh out of his Intermediate year and guided by a childhood love of maps, stars and the outdoors, he couldn’t have imagined the career that awaited him. Surveying, back then, was a three-year degree, but for Neil, that was only the beginning. He went on to complete postgraduate study in 1978, This learning built the foundation of a rewarding career.

Neil didn’t stumble into surveying; it called to him early. As a boy, he drew maps. Neil says, “As a boy I used to draw maps of areas where I lived and was also keen on astronomy as in the motion of the stars and the sun. I didn’t really consider anything else.” He said it was a school careers advisor that sealed the path with a simple truth: “You need to love the outdoors and be good at maths.” And Neil was both.

What followed was a career that spanned continents, industries, technologies, and generations of surveyors. He describes himself as “lucky,” lucky to have worked around the world, and in his words, “lucky to have woken up nearly every day genuinely happy to go to work.” But luck doesn’t explain the scale of his contribution.

Some of the work Neil remembers most fondly sits at the heart of surveying history. He was part of the Lands & Survey Earth Deformation Surveys, vast, highly technical programmes with teams of 25 surveyors capturing night-time observations to measure crustal plate movements. He spent months conducting astronomic measurements, calculating the rotation of plates from observations that were first made in the 1940s. The legacy of those surveys remains part of scientific record. After leaving Lands & Survey, Neil went on to have a successful career as a lecturer at Otago University for 20 years. He says he loved the teaching environment and often reflects on the success of his students.

From there, his world expanded. In Western Australia, he worked on iron-ore and natural-gas projects of staggering scale, where tolerance limits were often as tight as a single millimetre. In London and the Pilbara, he worked alongside former students, sometimes under them, sometimes opposite them, sometimes leading them. Neil said it was always satisfying working alongside fellow Otago alumni.

But of all the extraordinary jobs, nothing quite compares to the Battersea Power Station redevelopment in London. For three years, Neil managed the monitoring and surveying contracts on what would become one of the world’s most ambitious heritage-conversion projects. Neil says, “Watching those enormous brick walls shift and settle as construction progressed, sometimes at alarming rates, made for some intense days, but also some of the most rewarding.”

Twice since retiring from the project, he has returned as a tourist, marvelling at the beauty of a place he helped bring back to life.

As surveying evolves, Neil is optimistic but realistic. Otago’s School of Surveying, attracting more students than many of its international counterparts, remains a vital pipeline for the profession. Every graduate walks into a job, and employment remains high. But Neil also sees a bright future fuelled by new technology, and he’s envious of the tools the next generation will get to use.

So how did his journey bring him to McKenzie & Co? After decades overseas and in major construction roles, he found himself looking for a new challenge. He walked into an interview with Peter Cottle (Surveying Principal), and within minutes, he knew he’d found his next team. He describes it as the most welcoming environment he’d encountered, a generous and genuinely happy place to work.

Retirement, surprisingly, wasn’t something he’d thought much about until just six months before it happened. It was only when working alongside younger surveyors, watching their sharpness with emerging tech, that he realised it was time. Not because he’d lost passion, but because the profession had a strong new generation ready to take the lead.

And there is something beautifully fitting about where Neil chose to finish his career. In his first year of teaching, decades earlier, one of his students was a young Clayton McKenzie. “To retire within Clayton’s business after a career spent teaching, guiding, measuring, building, and shaping the profession felt like coming full circle,” says Neil. A teacher at the beginning, a mentor throughout, and a respected elder of surveying at the end.

For Neil, that final chapter has been more than work. It has been deeply rewarding. And for surveying, his contribution has been immeasurable.

The McKenzie & Co team hosted a farewell for Neil, but he is still working on odd jobs for us, we hope he never truly says farewell to the profession entirely.