112 | BUILDING LW & Co Building OPEN 7 DAYS FOR ALL YOUR BUILDING SUPPLIES Phone 06 370 6888 masterton@mitre10.co.nz 159/167 Ngaumutawa Road, Masterton Living the childhood ambition LW & Co Building is known as a high-end commercial and residential design-and-build construction firm. T T Virginia Wright Luke Wilson set up his construction company LW & Co Building in Masterton in 2017. From the time he was a boy Luke had two things he wanted to do when he grew up: join the army and be a builder. When he first applied for the army in 1998 there were no vacancies for carpentry apprenticeships, so he did that elsewhere before trying again. When there were still no vacancies for builders he joined their Civil Works department, knowing he’d be able to ask for a transfer eventually. He did six NZQA papers as a Civil Works Operator while working on a number of general civil construction projects as well as roads and airfields. Luke left the army in 2008 having done five deployments of which three were as a builder: two in East Timor and one in Afghanistan that gained him an MNZM Queens’ Merit medal for services with the Defence Force. After travelling for a few years, he knew he missed building, but it was the move to Masterton with his family in 2017 that led to Luke building a family home and starting his own building company. “One thing led to another with people saying, ‘we like your house and we’d like you to build ours’ and I ended up employing another two guys to help me rather than turn work away,” Luke says. The residential work continued to expand until after Covid and when it tapered off. LW & Co started doing more light commercial work as Luke felt the responsibility of having a team of 12 builders with mortgages to pay and families to feed. LW & Co Building is now known as a high-end commercial and residential designand-build construction firm. As well as light commercial work, such as building Hood Aerodrome for Wingnut and Sir Peter Jackson, and the numerous residential and commercial jobs they’ve undertaken over the years for a Wairarapa community of seven families, they’re the core contractors behind commercial developments such as Masterton’s Poplar Industrial Park. Regardless of the size of the job, or the client it’s for, when LW & Co Building is involved, certain things are standard practice. Luke takes his Health & Safety record personally and is constantly checking systems and procedures, he says. “Every time I go to site I look around and if I see something, I say ‘that’s not right, please fix it’. Communication is a big thing from start to finish.” Clear communication is central to Luke’s approach with his team and clients alike. His goal is always to give his clients what they want while being aware that everything comes with a cost. He runs an open book system and personally works with clients right through the build. Site visits are encouraged and if clients want changes he’ll walk them through what that looks like. That’s no doubt why, when he drives past the 680sqm, five-bedroom architectural house clad in a mixture of burnt larch and brick they finished three years ago, he knows that all the hidden detail is holding strong and isn’t surprised there’s been no call back. It’s not something he leaves to chance as he pro-actively visits clients after six months to make sure they’re happy and let them know that any problems will be remedied immediately. So far it hasn’t happened, and Luke’s confident that he and his team will continue to deliver beautiful bespoke houses and well-constructed buildings to a wide range of clients for the foreseeable future.
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