14 | Rotorua Business Awards: Evolve Construction BUSINESS Forging a great history Evolve Construction has been nominated in the Manufacturing, Primary and Building at this year’s Rotorua Business Awards. Project for son opens doors T T Sue Russell T T Sue Russell Top Gear Rotorua ALL DOMESTIC & COMMERCIAL WORK Ph. 07 347 0541 Mob. 027 475 1296 www.adplumbing.co.nz ROTORUA AND SURROUNDS Plumbing • Solar • Gas • Maintenance • Renovations General Engineering • Stainless Steel & Alloy Fabrication/Repair • Alloy Boat Fabrication & Repair • CNC Machining VMC • CNC Plasma Cutting • Guillotine & Press Work • Custom Car Fabrication 07 350 1306 | 51 Pururu St, Mangakakahi, Rotorua | ken@saslimited.co.nz Decorative & Functional Panels Made Affordable & Easy P: 0800 7599 663 E: sales@plywoodcity.co.nz W: www.pyramidpanels.co.nz AliPanel Wet Wall Linings RockPanel Decorative ply wall linings Truck Deck By For most of the 34 years he has been a builder, Brent Austin has been self-employed. In fact it wasn’t until recently that the Rotorua based builder was still on his own, however, as fate would have it, a project manager, who had worked with Brent in a previous company, presented as a business partner and, at the start of 2020, Brent and Justin Henderson created Evolve Construction. “We had worked together 2008 – 2010 and had a great history, so when the opportunity presented I thought this just made sense because Justin is an excellent carpenter & has very good project management skills,” Brent explains. With two on board, the company functions very efficiently, with both builders pricing their own jobs and working jointly or individually on projects as required. Brent spends quite a lot of time in the office using AutoCAD to produce working drawings so some of their projects. Justin is also learning to do this. We did have an apprentice throughout 2020, through until mid 2021. When Business Central spoke with Brent Evolve Construction had two major projects on the go, one about $100,000 and the other $550,000. While concentrating on these projects, Brent and Justin fit in smaller jobs. Scott Hewson began his engineering career offering mobile services to the forestry sector back in 2005. Demand grew and soon he took on a couple of staff and a workshop and gathered necessary equipment and tools. “That’s when we started doing more manufacturing, rather than just repair work and from there the company just grew.” His first foray into manufacturing trailers came about when he designed and built a closed-in trailer for his son who was into gocarts at the time. For the past decade, when word got out about the quality of the trailers he built, demand increased, to the point where, today, 95% of the work is in trailer construction. For the past four years Top Gear Rotorua Ltd - located in Tallyho Street, Mangakakahi - has manufactured 50 enclosed trailers each year. “With Covid we were worried about the leisure market we serviced; however, experience has proven our concerns unfounded as we just got busier and busier.” Top Gear will build 100 trailers by the end of the year and has 40 to 50 forward orders. Scott doesn’t want this number to increase and says already, it is feeling quite stretched. A standard 2.4m x 1.5m trailer takes 30 hours to build but orders can go up to 7.5m with massive fitouts. “Some have 240V solar systems, kitchen and bathrooms, so these bespoke orders take considerably longer to make.” “That works well, because sometimes we are waiting for materials, so we move over to a smaller job and in that way we are not having any down-time.” Asked how the Covid experience has been, Brent says the first lockdown wasn’t too much of a problem; just some weeks not working before resuming under restrictions. However, the second dose of Covid brought more challenges. “When Auckland really ground to a halt in terms of supply that’s when we started to feel the pinch. “Now if you want weather-board, if you want Gib Board, it’s March at the earliest, but we have been pretty fortunate so far.” Evolve Construction has been nominated in the Manufacturing, Primary and Building at this year’s Rotorua Business Awards. The category has three finalists and Brent says it’s a real thrill to have been accepted as a finalist. The challenges that come with taking on renovations is something Brent and Justin both enjoy. “We find that when we do renovations and the owners have been in the home a long time, there’s a real emotional connection, that you don’t experience with new builds so much. “We know how important a home is to these people who have chosen to stay and make improvements to it, so it is work we really enjoy.” The 900m2 workshop has all the equipment to manufacture from bare steel. “We try to do as much in-house as possible so we do our own 2D and 3D drafting and drawing to give customers a real sense of what the space will be like when completed.” Top Gear has its own CNC cutting machine and almost all the fabrication is completed at the workshop. “We use Perry’s Metal Protection in Tauranga and Powdercoating NZ for the paint-work. They are based in Cambridge.” Given growing demand Scott says he intends to take on a couple more engineers, but at this time, finding the right staff, is not easy. He says its best to get a person with the right attitude and train them up, rather than look for someone with a vast amount of engineering shopwork experience. “That way, I can ensure they learn what is essential to do well and they’re not bringing in any bad habits from other jobs.” Scott says while the trailer frame is of a fairly standard nature, it’s the fit out and finishings that require a more specialised skill set. He acknowledges there isn’t really a “We try to do as much inhouse as possible so we do our own 2D and 3D drafting and drawing to give customers a real sense of what the space will be like when completed.”
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