International Women's Day 2025 - Diana Kuhtz-Covich

Ahead of International Women's Day 2025, we spoke to Diana Kuhtz-Covich, Board member and certifying plumber and gasfitter, about how she got started in the trades and the time she was mistaken for a catering school student.

Di, who lives in Kaitaia, got into plumbing and gasfitting by chance in her 30s after working in an office for 15 years.

“My career’s never been some great planned out thing, I fell from one job to another to another. I got a job at Winstones, which turned into Placemakers and I ended up running the office there by the time I was 20. I had two staff that were about 20 years older than me.”

“I worked at Placemakers for about six years. The boss of Northland Plumbers was in one day trying to hire my sister-in-law who was working with us but she was about to go on maternity leave. And she said, ‘why don't you get Di? She's sick of here’. And he said, ‘oh we won’t be able to afford her!’ I said, ‘you don’t know that’ so we sat down and talked. I ended up running the office for Northland Plumbers for 10 years.

Northland Plumbers got short of staff and when Di started to help them out beyond the office, she thought she might as well be getting paid for it. She approached her boss about starting an apprenticeship.

“They were pretty cruel the first couple of weeks, trying to put me off. They sent me to dig up a meter at the Triboard Mill one day with a pick and shovel. They knew it was under a heap of stone and rubble. I'm talking big stone, 100mm rock. I started digging for a while, it was awful. They said ‘oh, it's around here somewhere’. I went into the offices and found the water plans from the guy who was in charge of maintenance. I traced it and found it so I didn’t end up digging for ages. They thought I'd spend all day digging rock! They did things like that for a couple of weeks and then they realised that I was pretty serious about it.”

Di completed her apprenticeship at Wintec, where current Deputy Board chair Selwyn Hikuroa was one of her tutors. At first Di was only doing a plumbing apprenticeship, but the tutors encouraged her to pick up gasfitting too, which served Di well as gasfitters were thin on the ground at that time in the Far North.

“On the first or second day at tech, I was walking down the hallway and it was the week that we're just doing health and safety, so we weren’t on the tools. I had a briefcase and these two panel and paint tutors from next door said to each, ‘oh, she must be lost, do you think she needs directions to the catering school?’”

“They were dead serious, they thought I was lost!”

“That would be the closest thing I've ever had to some form of slur. Let your work do the talking for you and people will leave you alone pretty quickly.”

As soon as she passed her certifying gasfitting examination in 2011 – which she won the Board’s Certifying Excellence Award for – Di started her business, Unique Plumbing and Gas, in Kaitaia.

Di’s favourite part of the job is the satisfaction when you fix something that people thought couldn’t be fixed. “Especially if you’re the third person they've pulled in to fix it. That’s pretty satisfying.”

“My job is pretty much the same thing every day, but I get to go to really cool places. We have some pretty amazing spots up here [in the Far North]. Even after 37 years, I think it’s cool!”

“I'm not really a people person, but have met amazing people through this work.”

When asked what could encourage more women to enter the trades, she said talking to girls at an earlier age to show them it is a possible career path for them.

“But this work is not for everybody. There's no way about it - hot and sweaty and tiring a lot of the time.”

Di was appointed to the Board in 2016, and served as Board chair from 2022-2025. As she approaches her final year on the board (Board members have maximum terms of 9 years), she reflects on the progress that has been made during her service.

“What else would I proud of? I don't really think about things much in that sort of respect, I just have really enjoyed it. Have met so many amazing people and their incredible work that they do. It's been a fun time for sure. I'll be sad to be finished.”

Ngā mihi to Di for the korero.