Māori have long been an innovative and creative people, creating traditional pā, marae, whare and waka. S
o it’s no surprise to see a builder from Waikato-Tainui preparing for the New Zealand Certified Builders Apprentice Challenge Nationals competition in June.
Tatua Tai Rakena, Waikato Tainui is an apprentice builder working on house renovations.
Rakena says his day-to-day work is something he’s done for a long time instinctively.
“There’s this thing that I used to do when I was younger, when I used to do things by myself. I used to call it Māori engineering. I used to just put things together and be like ‘that’s some mean Māori engineering.’ I think that we just like to be a tutu and we’ll start building things, and more to help our whānau,” he says.
Rakena has been an apprentice for the past three years for Graham Walker Builders.
Rakena’s journey to building began with watching YouTube tutorials, in a bid to help his father with work on the family homestead.
However, he says to get the job done better, he had to take on a pre-trade course at WinTec.
“He was working, doing a lot of work on his garage that he was living in at the homestead in Ngāruawāhia. We didn’t know what we were doing, so I had to be the bigger man and go to school and learn instead of watching YouTube.”
Rakena was born in Ngāruawāhia but lived in Australia from the age of eight to 22.
But in a short couple of years he has reached the National NZCB Apprentice Challenge being held in Wellington, after taking out the regional heats in Waikato.
He says everything he has learnt in the regional heats has helped develop his skills.
“The first year I did it, I didn’t know what to expect, I just went in there with an open mind, then I got there and I didn’t get to finish my project. The second year I got there I didn’t get to finish it but I felt more prepared, so I had everything written out. Then the third time, the year that I won it, I was more prepared, I had everything all written out and everything pretty much done and I got the project finished at the end of the day.”
But his future ambitions is to support his family, in entering the world of building
“I hope to be able to run my own business, to be able to do what my boss is doing, to get my family by my side, have my name out there running a company. That’s pretty much why I did it to help the whānau have the younger generations come up and become builders.
“It’s better than being at home doing nothing.”
The New Zealand Certified Builders Apprentice Challenge kicks off in June in Wellington.