Colleen Upton of Master Plumbers member company Hutt Gas and Plumbing was awarded in the 2021 New Year’s Honours List for her services to the plumbing and gasfitting industry and women. Colleen is pictured here with her 2020 Jackson Women in Plumbing Award.
COLLEEN UPTON ONZM Colleen Upton, General Manager at Hutt Gas and Plumbing, was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in the 2021 New Year’s Honours List for her services to the plumbing and gasfitting industry and women. NZ Plumber talks to Colleen about her 29-year career and thoughts on receiving the award.
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olleen Upton got into the plumbing and gasfitting industry by chance when working with her electrician husband doing the accounts and bookings in their business. A job for one of the owners at Hutt Gas and Plumbing led to them asking her if she would type up their quotes, and so it began. She did quotes, then wages, then invoicing and looked after the accounts— all on a contract basis—literally swapping buckets of paperwork. “I kid you not,” says Colleen. “I had a bucket at home and they had a bucket in the workshop. All the paperwork went into the workshop bucket, which I would pick up and then drop off the empty bucket.” At this stage, she was working from home with three kids under four. As the hours increased she said she wanted to buy into the business and she did, becoming a Director 29 years ago.
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“I didn’t have a burning desire at that stage to work in the plumbing and gasfitting industry but I knew that I liked to work with tradespeople,” she says. “They have an earthy honesty about them, and of course it didn’t take me long to fall in love with this industry and the people that work in it.” Colleen went on to hold a broad range of roles in the industry. These include being a Hutt Valley/Wairarapa Master Plumbers Executive Committee Member, past President and current Secretary, and a former member of the national Master Plumbers Board. She has also served on the Plumbers, Gasfitters & Drainlayers Board and helped formulate New Zealand’s new plumbing qualifications as part of the Leadership and Governance Group and Qualifications Working Group for The Skills Organisation. In 2020, she was reappointed to the Weltec Advisory Board for Plumbing, Gasfitting & Drainlaying following a previous 10-year stint.
Championing diversity Colleen is also a champion for women in the industry, saying there have been two motivating factors. “I have a granddaughter and I want her to grow up in a world where she can do and be whatever she wants, from a plumber to a prime minister, without having to take her gender into account. I want this for my granddaughter and for everyone else’s granddaughters, daughters, sisters and mothers. For that matter, I also want our sons to have the same choices and for gender not to be an issue for them either when deciding what they want to do.” Several years ago, Colleen was approached by a young woman who had completed a pre-trade and had been to over 25 plumbing businesses seeking an apprenticeship. “Not one of them would even agree to meet with her,” she recalls. “She was devastated. I met with her and found out how passionate she was about the industry, how well she had
