Young and Fast, Ambitious and Competitive

13 Jul
Forget Netflix, if you want to really subscribe to a drama with cliff hangers and plot twists, just follow the day to day of the New Zealand Construction Industry. Unpredictable interest rates, sticky inflation, Covid-19, supply shortages. Construction is a constant ebb and flow. Boom times and bust times. Labour shortages one day, and then nationwide redundancies the next. 
 
 A company’s size and structure is key to weathering tight times, and capitalising on the booms. For instance, a sole trader has no responsibility to staff during down turns, but equally no capacity to take on work requiring a team. Conversely a nationwide homebuilding company can tender for huge projects knowing they have the resources to deliver, but they also have millions of dollars in overhead costs. Where a company wants to sit on this spectrum is a careful calculation. 
 
 At SGB we are lean and fighting fit. The company began at a grassroots level about a decade ago, and still retains all the hustle you would find in a one-man band looking to put food on the table. That decade has seen a lot of tactical scaling though. Director Sam, Quantity Surveyor Nathan and Excel Spreadsheet Cadet Ben form a small but organised office team, making sure or frontline builders are kept busy delivering quality workmanship. There are no bureaucratic inefficiencies we need to price into tenders, just a few blokes and an overworked coffee press. 
 
 Our team of in-house carpenters is generally held around a dozen full time employees, a combination of foremen, leading hands and apprentices. This number feels optimal for everyone to have close, working relationships with each other, and for management to be able to maintain genuine quality control. SGB can invest in each employee individually, foster development and hold everyone accountable. We have also carefully incorporated specialist skill sets into our core team, such a go-to guys for roofing, concreting and plastering. 
 A streamlined team means everyone knows everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses. Which means we run a high trust model. High trust enables initiative. Initiative means efficiency. Our efficiency makes us highly competitive. 
 
 We have strong capacity and scalability, due to long running relationships with excellent subcontractors and a good local reputation within the industry. Our subcontractor relationships are all personalised. We take care for instance not to book our plumbers and electricians to be working on top of each other and navigating a messy building site. In return, when unforeseen circumstances mean we need people onsite fast, they reliably pick up the phone. Locally we have a great reputation, particularly around workplace culture and training opportunities. This means we have potential to easily hire fulltime staff, across all positions. Good quality control at the employment level means we are confident in our builder’s ability to represent the company onsite and manage labour-only work as needed for larger jobs.