Iven Hamilton

Iven Hamilton

Iven Hamilton moved to Hawai‘i Island from Maui two years ago so his daughter could attend school here. Previously, he worked in the machine shop at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, honing his skills as a millwright and mechanic. At Honua Ola, Iven’s job is simple. He has to fix whatever’s broken.

“Anything that needs to be fixed, we either fix or fabricate,” he said. Honua Ola keeps lots of stuff in inventory, he says, but there’s also a lot that’s custom made or that would take too long to import. “More than half of the plant is dedicated to reducing emissions,” Iven said. “Mechanical ash collectors. Electrostatic precipitators that prevent smoke particles from escaping. These things work like a motor vehicle exhaust system, except at Honua Ola they’re as big as a building.”

There are a lot of moving parts at Honua Ola and Iven keeps them humming along.