Before founding Binary Refinery, Kat served as General Manager of Technology and Marketing at Lifetime, a nationwide financial advisory group. During her tenure, she led the organisation through its early AI adoption and governance journey - translating emerging technology into a structured, safe and business-wide capability uplift.

This case study captures that work: a practical transformation that strengthened governance, improved productivity, and equipped more than 160 people to use AI with confidence, clarity and responsibility.

Artisan Paving is a successful Christchurch-based civil and commercial paving company. With a fast-growing workload and a small operational team, they needed technology that simply worked - without fuss, complexity, or ongoing management overhead.

Their existing setup, inherited over time, was spread across GoDaddy licences, outdated admin settings, mismatched accounts and systems that were difficult to maintain. They were paying more than they needed to, while getting less capability and less security than a modern business requires.

All Heights, led by Matt Siddells, manages a high volume of on-site work that requires clear documentation and regular photographic updates for clients. Their existing process for capturing, organising and sharing job-site photos had become clunky and time-consuming. Matt approached Binary Refinery with a clear brief and an initial assumption that the solution would be a custom AI-powered app.

Instead, the project revealed something more valuable: sometimes the most strategic decision is not to build at all.

Pixelsmith is a boutique digital design and web development studio in Christchurch, working with a diverse range of New Zealand businesses. With multiple clients spanning different industries, tones of voice and brand identities, one of the biggest content challenges was maintaining consistency across dozens of websites, marketing assets and digital channels.