94 | CONTRACTING Collective Contractors T T Virginia Wright Auckland contractors provide the full package Collective Contractors will do everything a construction project needs, working from Mangawhai to Drury, and everywhere in between. “My boss knew that I’d do a good job and that I’d give him what he wanted to set up the next stage properly, so I ended up doing all his foundation work.” Operating with the tag line ‘We help with everything from the slab down’ Auckland-based Collective Contractors has the expertise, the experience, and the equipment to do it all: earthworks, retaining walls, roading, drainage, and utility services installation, providing a comprehensive civil construction package for land development and subdivision projects. Collective Contractors was co-founded in 2017 by two friends, who had bonded over various side projects while still at school. Keegan Webster is the commercial manager, and accountant Simon Long is the accounts and finance manager. The company resulted from Keegan, a hard-working builder, seeing where he could put the heavy machinery driving skills he had learnt as a child to good use digging foundations for the company he was apprenticed to in 2013. “My boss knew that I’d do a good job and that I’d give him what he wanted to set up the next stage properly, so I ended up doing all his foundation work,” Keegan says. “Then I moved into being a subcontractor doing a lot of earthworks with labour-only contracts, and supplying machinery for larger companies like Fulton Hogan and HEB Construction and so on.” During his carpentry apprenticeship, Keegan bolstered his skills with a night course to gain a Diploma in Construction Management, and being too busy to go out helped him save enough to buy his first old bobcat digger. As the business grew, Simon joined him, with Collective Contractors carrying out large contracts for the bigger companies. However, being at the mercy of their scheduling didn’t always fit with the need to keep 30 operators and diggers (a mix of owned and leased), fully employed. Having a secure pipeline of work meant taking on more responsibility as they undertook the contracts for their own projects. They downsized to 14 diggers and operators when they started doing their own full contract management with all the additional management and systems that came with it. The need for quality control means having to fully understand a project from start to finish to make sure things are done correctly, and in the right order, which is why Keegan is now a certified drainlayer as well as a licensed building practitioner. He wanted to be sure he would fully understand his clients’ needs to make sure they would deliver it efficiently. “Because if I don’t understand it, and what the challenges are, I can’t put together the right team for the job,” he says. Keegan and Simon still drive past their first retaining wall with a wry smile for the lessons learned while ensuring the customer got a good result, as Keegan explains. “We actually sunk a digger in the mud, and we learnt a lot about pricing contracts, but we owned our mistakes and we still do, which is one of the reasons developers like to work with us.” The job might be for a developer, but Collective Contracts’ responsibility boils down to providing the builders with the best platforms to work with so that they can get the developer’s job done on time. Keegan’s teams have the experience to identify issues from the plans, so they can see a potential clash between two services before they start digging, and adjust what they are doing accordingly. They fix the error; they don’t compound it. Whether it’s preparing a greenfield site ready for the builders, complete with retaining, services and roading ready to go, or a stand-alone building site for a single dwelling, Collective Contractors will do everything a construction project needs, working from Mangawhai to Drury, and everywhere in between. Need cartage services tomorrow? Get in touch today. Tip Truck Hire & Bulk cartage | Aggregate Supply Screened topsoil wholesale | Landscaping Deliveries Contact Us 021 0838 5837 Jarrod@sillsco.co.nz sillsco.co.nz COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION AND CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTORS CONTACT tom@colemancivil.co.nz 0800 CLMNC 1 - 0800 256621 SHAPING THE FUTURE OF CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION
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