| 67 RAD Building BUILDING Strong team culture key for builder RAD Building has carved out success building bespoke homes throughout the Mackenzie Basin. T T Hugh de Lacy Proud to support Rad Building www.toddmudiegroup.co.nz Call us for all your frame & truss and building materials needs Timaru, Twizel, Oamaru, Tekapo, Fairlie - we cover the region. HOURS OF BUSINESS Monday - Friday 7.00am - 5.00pm Saturday 8.30am - 12.30pm 33 Seadown Road, Washdyke Phone 03 688 8074 Email sales@timaruitm.co.nz “We’ll see you right” TIMARU Proudly supporting RAD Building Providing expertise in designing your new home or renovation. 03 689 7077 or 027 689 7069 KenT_design@xtra.co.nz 713 Lower Hook Road, RD8 Waimate The Complex – 300 Hilton Highway, Washdyke, Timaru Shifting his staff around his various worksites, and being able to rely “absolutely” on his single materials supplier, have been the keys to the success of Rob Davis’ Mackenzie Basin bespoke house company RAD Building. The company gets its name from founder and owner Rob’s initials. Rob is a former outdoor recreation instructor who decided he was getting a bit old for dashing round the mountains, and sought a more secure future by taking up an adult apprenticeship at the age of 26. “The name’s a hangover from my climbing days when I used to label all my gear with my initials,” he says. Rob worked as an outdoor recreation instructor for the Aoraki Polytechnic in Timaru, then the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre south of Turangi, before finishing up with eight years saving lives in the Department of Conservation’s Mount Cook alpine rescue team. “I decided to buy land and built a log home in Twizel when it became obvious that I was reaching the upper end of what’s really a young man’s game, and I decided to bow out before I got taken out.” Training as a carpenter, he received his qualifications in December 2011, and he’s been working under his own name throughout the 12 years since. RAD Building these days has a staff of 12, including Rob, and the company has survived unscathed both the labour and materials shortages, and the more recent building industry downturn, by taking a novel and deliberate approach to its management. “I don’t put three guys in a van and leave them together. “I prefer to develop a strong team culture by keeping everybody constantly mixing according to their skill-sets. “This means there’s no single critical person when they get sick and their particular knowledge is temporarily lost from the job. “I move the skill-sets – and the person – to where they’re needed, and that way the whole team is aware of what’s going on in any job,” Rob says. The other key factor in RAD Building’s success has been its relationship with its materials supplier, Independent Timber Merchants’ (ITM’s) Timaru branch. Rob orders all the materials for any job before work starts, and he stores them at the Twizel headquarters. “We work solely with ITM and get 95% of everything we need from them, and so we’re deeply loyal to them,” Rob says. When Rob orders materials he knows that if the TImaru ITM doesn’t have them it will source them from the nationwide chain’s stores in Kaiapoi, North Canterbury, and Ashburton for daily delivery. “I take great comfort from the fact that I only have to call Timaru ITM once and all our materials supply challenges go away.” Another managerial quirk of Rob’s is that, besides the upmarket bespoke houses he builds throughout the MacKenzie Basin, he keeps a dozen renovation or repair jobs on the books to fill the gaps between housebuilds. “These things are the reason for the company’s success, which I measure by the number of people who want to work for us and by the customers’ satisfaction with our work.” And despite the current downturn in the construction industry, Rob is looking to increase the size of his enterprise with a view to bringing apprentices aboard and offering them succession opportunities as builders in their own right when they come out of their time.
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