70 | Virginia Wright Healthy mix of renovations and new Tongue and groove panelling. BUILDING Davcon to page 72 Jules Davis established his successful construction company Davcon Ltd. in Napier on his return from the UK early in 2005. Over there he’d been sub-contracting to a company doing loft conversions and was used to being his own boss and working his own hours, even if they were nevertheless long. A qualified builder, his experience included residential housing work in Christchurch, and structural work on high-rise buildings for Mainzeal in Wellington using steel and concrete, followed by finishing work. All of which stood him in good stead for renovation work in the UK when he arrived there in 2000. “You can’t build out in England, so you have to go up. So they put a set of stairs in, knock the roof out on the back side of the house and then create a box with one or two rooms and a toilet or bathroom or whatever,” explains Jules. Together with a couple of mates that’s what he did for four years or more, getting a taste for making sure everything’s “plumb square, level and straight” on the way through. A focus that he now takes care to instil in the apprentices who train with him, of which over the years there have been many. Renovations still make up around 30% of what Davcon do with the rest being new builds, many of them architectural, some multi-unit developments, and smaller sub-divisions. That loft conversion experience also taught him the need to problem-solve as required, to ensure new met with old in a seamless way, that works for the client as well as meeting code. “Say you’re extending a wall and the original is not plumb, and your client doesn’t have the budget to spend moonbeams on extending that wall, then sometimes you have to put the new wall on a lean to match the original. “You have to use your brains and work through all the solutions. I love doing renovations, especially if there’s a good design,” says Jules. That includes renovations with budgets from 300 dollars to 2 million dollars; a bathroom or an architectural extension. “We’re not fussy, we’ll do whatever. We’ve got quite a few guys and it’s really good training for them to learn how to do it properly, to think for themselves and learn about communicating, and if they make mistakes we make them good and they never do it again because they understand it,” says Jules. The Davcon team has grown from Jules and his one apprentice Paul Davidson, who now works for himself, to 20 builders including Jules and four apprentices. The multi-units and the subdivisions also feed an important element into the overall matrix of Davcon’s work. As Jules says they’re not that hard to build “so it gives the younger guys the ability to build a house themselves without having to hand over a six to 10 million dollar project and say ‘hey guys go and build this today’. It gives you the ability to train guys,” says Jules. Davcon’s staff retention history speaks for itself. Jules takes pride in the fact that the nine staff he’s lost have all gone off to successfully start businesses of their own, “not a lot of “You have to use your brains and work through all the solutions. I love doing renovations, especially if there’s a good design.” guys leave to go and work for someone else,” says Jules. Roger Mosely has been with Davcon for 14 years and was foreman on the job that recently won them six awards at the Masterbuilder House of The Year Awards 2022 including for being one of the top 100 houses nationwide. Built in Central Hawkes Bay to Andy Coltart’s design it measures 800sqm. “Andy is well-known in Hawkes Bay for that big farmhouse style of housing with classic design features like large overhangs, exposed rafters and tongue-and-groove soffits.
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