Meet our Directors
Aaron Campion
Aaron has over 16 years of engineering experience, specialising in safety engineering, traffic engineering and transportation planning for both consultancy and local government in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He has conducted numerous transport projects and network related programmes, with a demonstrable ability to evaluate risk and provide robust and practical transport engineering recommendations to ensure that safety and efficiency outcomes are achieved.
Aaron’s technical transport knowledge and ability to think in context of the project and its objectives, gives him the ability to be professionally dynamic and outcome focused. This is a highly sought capability and has been instrumental in him being selected for many of his roles. He has demonstrated a sound knowledge of safe systems engineering and how this is applied in practice, being nationally recognised as an established safe systems expert and regularly called on for his experience.
Tony Harrison
Tony has 29 years engineering experience, 12 of which focused on management and 18 on network, road safety, traffic engineering and project management. He has led a wide range of state highway projects, ranging from strategic and route studies to major intersection improvements. His most recent role was the national network management leader for a large multinational consultancy where he provided client relationship, performance management and development of systems and technology across six Network Outcomes Contracts (NOCs) and three local authority network contracts. He understands the views of a wide range of stakeholders and political views and often provides a sounding board for our clients as to how to approach issues.
He has worked for local government, consultancies and contractors which provide him a unique insight into New Zealand infrastructure and transport needs. Tony has also undertaken a range of work for private sector clients including integrated transport assessments, procurement and project management.
Meet our Team
Jacques Steyn - Transport Safety Engineer
Jacques joined our team in November 2019. He has BE Civil (Hons) as well as being trained in road safety barrier design and maintenance inspection, Safe Systems training as well as NZS3910 training. His recent experience includes being the safety engineer for the South Canterbury Network Outcomes Contract and the Engineer's Representative on the DoC Glacier Roads contract. He has been Engineer's Representative and Engineer's Representatives Assistant on a range of projects across Canterbury.
Jacques’ experience and understanding of road safety investigation, design and auditing, coupled with his technical diligence is highly valuable when carrying out safety projects, as he can proactively identify any potential issues and use a safe system approach to inform decisions. He has a passion for technology and leads our company focus on developing and utilising tools and systems to assist our clients and our own project delivery.
Jonathan Fletcher - Principal Transport Engineer
Jonno has 16 years experience in design and delivery of transportation and civil infrastructure projects. He has BE Civil (Hons) CMEngNZ as well as being trained in barrier design and construction, Safe Systems training, KiwiRail accredited reviewer and STMS L2/3.
Recent experience includes being the design manager for the Whakatu Arterial Link for Hastings District Council, Safety Manager for South and North Canterbury Network Outcomes Contracts, safety auditor on the North Canterbury Transportation Infrastructure Rebuild (NCTIR) project, and managing the speed management rollout for NZTA across Canterbury. He has been the Engineer's Representative for the Glacier Roads maintenance for the Department of Conservation for the past 5 years. This role involved the management of emergency works and maintenance activities in a highly sensitive environment.
Jonno is passionate about road safety and has strong technical skills in this area which are well complimented by his broad background including design, contract documentation, project management and traffic engineering.
Ashu Kedia - Transport Engineer
Ashu has over five years of academic and industrial experience in traffic and transportation engineering, including both in India and New Zealand. He is currently studying towards a PhD in Transportation Engineering at University of Canterbury and will be concluding his PhD research later this year. Ashu’s research is about ‘modelling the effects of online shopping on personal and freight transport in urban areas’ where Christchurch city has been used as a case study. His research, will quantify the effect of increased online shopping on consumers’ urban travel demand, which in turn is an important input for travel demand forecasting to inform future transport planning. This emerging knowledge will optimise locations for establishing logistics facilities in the city, reducing travel demands for consumers and service providers, and potentially relieve pressure from the city’s transport system.
Ashu has worked on several academic and industrial projects, such as travel demand forecasting, accessibility studies for public transport facilities and traffic impact assessments. Ashu’s sound technical knowledge of traffic and transportation systems, blended with his leadership skills, makes him a reliable transport professional.
Ashu's recent projects with Urban Connection involve preparing traffic impact assessments, road safety audits, road safety assessments, crash analysis and spatial analysis using GIS.
Karen Kiriona - Principal Engineer / Advisor
Karen has over 30 years of experience in the Civil Engineering industry. As a certified Professional Project Manager and Registered Engineering Associate (REA) Karen possesses extensive technical knowledge, particularly in the New Zealand roading sector.
A significant contributor to Karen’s success is her keen interest in effective communications and human relationships. Her passion in this area led to qualifying as a vocational Dale Carnegie Instructor in 2008 and also undertaking an accreditation program for Professional Mentoring and Workplace Coaching skills in 2013.
Karen brings her extensive experience in developing and facilitating interactive workshops for partnering, team building/development, lessons learned and innovation. Inspired by the Wellbeing and Resilience in the Workplace workshops that Urban Connection Limited have recently embarked on presenting, she is highly motivated to continue with further developments in this area.
For the past 10 years she has been employed by the NZTA initially as an independent consultant, utilised primarily in a project management/technical support role, and more recently in a full time capacity as Principal Advisor for Business Performance. Karen strives to improve processes and procedures with proven success at overseeing and contributing to every stage of the project lifecycle.
Ken Holst - Senior Traffic and Safety Engineer
Ken has over 30 years experience across a wide range of transport projects. For the last 10 years he was the Senior Traffic and Safety Engineer for NZTA where he was responsible for the safety performance across the Hawke's Bay and Gisborne Regions. He is experienced in crash reduction studies, fatal crash reporting, road safety audits and implementing road safety management strategies. With a background in geometric design Ken is ideal for undertaking safety audits for rural and urban transport projects.
He understands the client aspects and requirements related to development adjacent roading networks which provides an invaluable insight into traffic impact assessments.
Ken was the Project Manager for the NZ Rural Intersection Activated Warning Signs Study, team member for the NZ Rural Schools Speed Study and a member of the NZ Code of Practice for Temporary Traffic Control Review Committee.
Helen Harrison
Helen is Urban Connection's Business Administrator and is responsible for the day to day operation of the business and project administration. Helen manages accounts payable.
Vicki Campion
Vicki is the Executive Assistant to Tony and Aaron as well as our HR Manager.