84 | T T Hugh de Lacy Top apprentice rising star at Riverwood Riverwood completed two new houses and three renovations last year. BUILDING Riverwood Building It augurs well for a start-up residential building company to have its first apprentice win the Bay of Plenty regional title in the Certified Builders Apprentice Awards of 2022, and Riverwood Building of Rotorua has done just that. Jonny Mills brought home the bacon for Riverwood in his and the company’s first attempt at the competition, and it came as an endorsement of the young firm’s commitment to its staff of six. Riverwood Building was established in 2018 when a former professional moto-cross rider, Mike Phillips, and a career building foreman, Dan Dufty, teamed up in the venture. Mike was on the international moto-cross circuit from ages 17 to 27, collecting a couple of New Zealand titles and the usual smacking around from the succession of accidents that goes with the sport, the first and worst being a ruptured spleen which happened in 2009 and almost put paid to his career. It didn’t cure his love for motorbikes though. Mike quit the motocross circuit in 2014 after deciding he ought to find himself a real job, ideally one that built upon his amateur building experience while growing up on a farm. He landed himself an apprenticeship that year with Rotorua company Owen Builders, and by the end of 2018 he was out of his time. Dan Dufty at this time had been a foreman for Rotorua’s Pope Homes for the previous 11 years, and he was highly conscious of the risk involved in going out on his own with a young builder barely out of his time. Nor was the risk Dan’s alone: his wife Alice Dufty joined the company as office manager and “She’s the brains of the outfit still today,” Dan says. The first job the young company got was a stinker, the sort that would drive any independent builder back to the security of an established company. It involved cleaning up and finishing “an old pole shed in the middle of a paddock in the middle of nowhere,” Mike says. “It was half-finished and it wasn’t pretty, and Dan just about turned it in to go back to a proper job with Pope Homes.” But they got it finished, and polished off a wide assortment of other less-than-attractive Nulook Gateway is proud to support Riverwood Building 31-34 Allen Mills Rd, Rotorua 3010 nulook.rotorua@gatewayglass.co.nz 07 345 7816 glass, windows & doors GATEWAY • Locally Owned & Operated • Re-roofing • Spouting • New Houses • Free Quotes • Workmanship Guaranteed 0800 701 163 | www.rotovegasroofing.co.nz info@rotovegasroofing.co.nz | 6/153 Lake Rd, Rotorua www.townleyelectrical.co.nz 0274 943 919 | townleyelectrical@gmail.com PROUDLY SUPPORTING RIVERWOOD BUILDING 30+ years of electrical experience jobs before becoming established enough to be able to settle into a steady diet of new builds and renovations. Last year they completed two new houses and three renovations, and they’re looking forward this year to building a lined pole-house as a beach bach for a client . “That’ll be a pretty neat job to do,” Mike says. Riverwood Building has managed to roll with the economic punches of the past couple of years – to the degree that it’s taken on a second apprentice and another qualified builder – while dodging the worst impacts of rapidly rising material costs by not taking on any quote jobs for the past 18 months. “We had to make a few design changes to get jobs finished because of material shortages, especially for roof trusses and pre-nailed frames that we’d have to wait six to eight months for,” Mike says. Riverwood Building is now looking forward to taking its star apprentice Jonny onto the next level in his building career – and wondering if he couldn’t take out the national competition next time. Riverwood Building’s Jonny Mills won the Bay of Plenty regional title in the 2022 Certified Builders Apprentice Awards.
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