80 | Murray Shaw Builders New twist to trusted family company Many decades of exceptionally high standard work for new and repeat customers had made the company widely known throughout the Waikato. BUILDING T T Kelly Deeks With Todd Shaw and Eloise Lonnberg-Shaw taking over the family building company, Murray Shaw Builders is now in the hands of the second generation and providing the same trusted and personalised service, with a contemporary twist. Murray and Shona Shaw started Murray Shaw Builders in Hamilton in the mid 1970s and quickly earned a reputation for high quality workmanship with a professional edge. Son Todd joined the business in his late teens as an apprentice and as a team, he and Murray continued to hone their specialisation in personal and reliable service as they delivered high quality homes and commercial buildings in and around Hamilton city and elsewhere in the Waikato. Todd’s open, friendly, and knowledgeable approach makes him the perfect builder to help clients through all types of building projects. Whether a new home, an alteration or addition, or a commercial project, he will know how to help. Todd has gained a significant amount of experience building in New Zealand and in Europe, meeting Eloise who is Swedish, and then bringing her home in 2009 for what was supposed to be a three or four year stay. “Then of course we got settled,” Eloise says. “Apart from New Zealand being too far away from Sweden, it’s a great place to live and raise children.” Todd held a foreman role at Murray Shaw Builders until taking over the helm of the business in 2022. Todd and Eloise knew Murray had a good thing going for the past 50 years and were keen to carry on the family name. So many decades of exceptionally high standard work for new and repeat customers had made the company widely known throughout the Waikato. “So we haven’t changed the concept,” Eloise says. “We still supply to the same clients, we still do the same type of work which is architecturally designed homes, and we still work with the same subcontractors and designers. We are really just carrying on the business, but we’ve updated some of the systems and brought it into the 21st century.” The manual and paper-based systems are gone, and Murray Shaw Builders’ operation has been streamlined with software and the lines of communication opened up for builders, tradesmen, and clients. Eloise says in the current economic climate, Murray Shaw Builders’ improved transparency leads to better outcomes between the construction team and for their clients. “We appreciate how expensive it is to build now. Most of our clients, even though they might have built before, they haven’t done it for a while and they’ll find that it can be upwards of two or three times more expensive. So we have to up front and open. “We do pride ourselves on being the kind of builders who like to give the worst case scenario of how expensive things could get, as well as showing our clients where different choices can be made to bring costs down. “Our software makes all of that a lot easier as we have data readily available.” As well as managing Murray Shaw Builders’ office, Eloise has her own resource consents planning business, EnviroPlanning.
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