Business Central December 2021

| 97 BUILDING All about relationships you develop T Richard Loader Operating predominantly around Taupo, the business focuses on residential new builds along with the occasional renovation. Build Taupo W hen Jon and Amy Penn founded Build Taupo in 2013 their number one goal was establishing their reputation as a customer friendly builder of quality homes, so that people would wait just to get a Build Taupo built home. Eight years on and Jon and Amy do have a waiting list for customers wanting a Build Taupo Home and this year the company also received a Gold Award and Category Award at the Bay of Plenty Master Builders House Of The Year Awards. Amy says a Build Taupo home is a place that customers are proud to call their home and which exceeds their expectations both in finish and the building experience. “People have told me they would never build because building a new home was right up there with divorce, marriage, having a baby and moving house as the most stressful things in life. We want to make sure that building a house is not in that stressful category. “That comes down to the connections and relationships you develop with the customer and also our team and subcontractors. We know communication is a very big measure of success in our industry. Jon and I are both very hands on in the business and the customer will work with us through the whole journey.” Operating predominantly around Taupo, with some work stretching to Kinloch, the small family owned and operated business focuses on residential new builds along with the occasional renovation/extension. Build Taupo customers are able to base their house design off a range of off-the-shelf plans or preferably sit down with Jon and Amy to design a home from scratch based around lifestyle, family and the section to be built on. “We like to be highly involved in the design process and work with a range of local archi- tects and architectural designers. Occasionally people will bring existing plans into us.” Over the last few years Build Taupo has grown to a team of six, including a mix of qual- ified tradesmen and apprentices. Right from day one Amy and Jon decided that Build Taupo would always employ its own builders as staff, rather than use contract builders, to maintain greater control of the quality of workmanship and the training. “We’re big on training apprentices and the next generation of builders coming through. We’ve had eight apprentices complete their time with us since we started. When we bring our apprentices through they are trained to our high level of quality. We also use 100% local Taupo based subcontractors. That means we’re putting money back into our community and using smaller family owned and operated companies like ourselves.” Amy says Taupo is that ultimate playground that everyone loves because of the lake and the mountains. “You can do so much in your weekends here and it provides that perfect work/life balance. We’re getting a lot of people coming into the region who are realizing they don’t need to be in the bigger centres to do their work.” Certainly a company worth waiting to build with, in 2019 and 2021 the team at Build Taupo were finalists in the Great Lake Busi- ness Awards. PROUD TO SUPPORT BUILD TAUPO COMMERCIAL | HOSPITALITY | KITCHENS | CUSTOM CABINETRY (07) 378 8340 admin@graftjoinery.co.nz