Public Works Department

The Public Works Department (PWD) was born out of the Immigration and Public Works Act 1870, the brainchild of Julius Vogel, Minister of Finance of the recently elected Government. He saw this as the solution to New Zealand's slow growth and lack of funds to advance in a meaningful way. In a nutshell, the policy promoted by this piece of ground breaking legislation gave the Fox Administration the power to borrow ten million Pounds over 10 years to promote and offer subsidised immigration, construct roads and railways and provide water to alluvial gold fields. The construction works would be managed by a new Public Works Department, under the Minister of Immigration and Public Works, who had power to appoint Agents, sub-Agents, Engineers, Surveyors, clerks and other officers in New Zealand or elsewhere. Royal ascent was given to the Act on 12 September 1870 and 15 days later the Honorable William Gisborne was appointed the first Minister of Immigration and Public Works. The PWD's office was naturally Wellington based and divided into two branches Administration and Engineering. These were both vitally important roles with the Undersecretary being responsible for the proper accounting of enormous sums of money, and the Chief Engineer being responsible for the design of the cheapest appropriate road or railway. It is very easy to underestimate the sheer volume of work that had to be undertaken in a very short time frame, so they needed to appoint someone with good experience and excellent management skills. This process took a little time when seeking the best available international candidate, so an interim appointment was made by way of John Blackett, a man of significant experience as Provincial Engineer for Nelson, with responsibility for many difficult roads and bridges on the west Coast, establishing Westport as a river port, and later reporting on Oamaru's harbour improvements. So a man with a wide range of engineering experience set to building a team of Surveyors and Engineers to commence the grand task of implementing Julius Vogel's big dream. With Otago's railway project all set to go, management of that was able to be left to William Blair The formal establishment of a Public Works Engineering Office is a bit obscure but based on the early work that was able to be put in hand and the staff employed, it seems that the PWD Engineering Office stemmed out of the Otago Provincial Council's Public Works Office. Another key pointer to that was the fact that Julius Vogel was a Dunedin man, he had aired a lot of his thoughts at the Otago Provincial Council Meetings but found that a single council did not have the clout a Government had and