54 | CONTRACTING BOI Plumbing & Gas Small company wins big at NZ Plumbing awards BOIPG’s Zane Britton and Rachel Watson say the supreme 2022 New Zealand Master Plumber of the Year Award rewarded hard work and planning. Kelly Deeks A: 1512B State Highway 10, Kerikeri PO Box 196 Kerikeri, 0245 Safety Shop Wire Rope Warehouse Forestry & Rigging Services Proud supplier to BOI Plumbing & Gas M: 0274840999 E: terrainnorthland@xtra.co.nz 34 Klinac Lane,Waipapa 0246 Kerikeri, New Zealand theteam@northlandplumbing.co.nz www.northlandplumbing.co.nz Proud to Support BOI Plumbing & Gas 09 407 9157 Bay of Islands Plumbing and Gas (BOIPG) has dedicated its supreme 2022 New Zealand Master Plumber of the Year Award to Northland, being the first time the title has been awarded to a company across the bridge since the first Master Plumber of the Year award in 2001. BOIPG owner Zane Britton says the award is testament to hard work and planning. “We didn’t let all the world issues get in the way, we worked around them,” he says. Establishing BOIPG in 2018, Zane had spent the previous 12 years working in Australia. When Covid-19 hit New Zealand in February 2020, Zane and his partner Rachel Watson thought they were going to lose everything. “We thought everything we had just finally plucked up the courage to do was going to be washed down the street because of some pandemic that we had no knowledge of,” Zane says. “A lot of it was just fear. There was nothing that impacted us too much apart from the time off.” Zane and Rachel took advantage of the month off and started planning what they were going to do to survive. Their first action was to register as a critical supplier, then they quickly got some marketing together, and applied for all of the grants they could get in regard to supporting and keeping their staff. Then BOIPG pivoted towards Government work, and managed to become a preferred supplier. “There is no step by step guide to getting on that list. Through a lot of phone calls, emails, and Google searches, we managed to get the right information to the right person. “The media was showing us this is the end, so it was worth doing everything we could to survive.” “This award shows small town businesses can keep up with large companies.” Up until March 2020, BOIPG had been tracking amazingly, with high profit, return clients, and no staff turnover. “We brought something different to our local market,” Zane says. “When I left New Zealand, the plumbing industry was doing it one way, and when I came back 14 years later, it was still doing it the same way. I knew better ways of doing things and I started incorporating those into our forward way of thinking, adding different materials and different methods. “The result was the same for the client, but we’d got there in the shortest amount of time with the lowest cost possible.” BOIPG expanded its services once Rachel joined the business in 2020. As a people person, Rachel has been a hit with the client base as she tries to find the best way to meet every client’s individual requirements. Rachel is now project managing renovation projects as BOIPG hires all the trades and runs the job from start to finish. Zane, Rachel, and the team at BOIPG are absolutely stoked to bring the supreme award home. “We are thrilled for our staff, for Northland, and for our customers who might have sat on the fence and decided to choose us, to know they made the right decision. Sometimes in Northland, we see a lot of work go to outside competitors and we feel like we’re not on a par with the rest of the country. This award shows small town businesses can keep up with large companies. I want to tell every business here and every potential businesses that may start here that they can do it, they can do it in quick time, and they can do it even if they have to start with nothing like Rachel and I did. Just put your mind to it.”
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