| 121 T T Hugh de Lacy Shaun Rabbidge Builders won a 2024 Registered Master Builders Gold Medal Award in the value range of $1-$1.5 million for a four-bedroom home at West Melton. Shaun Rabbidge Builders BUILDING With 31 years behind him in the building trade, and 20 years in business in his own right, Shaun Rabbidge has established his company, Shaun Rabbidge Builders, as a leading custom home builder, supported by alterations and additions services based in Loburn, near Rangiora. He formed his company in 2004, and his team of five skilled tradesmen and apprentices is supported by quality sub-contractors with whom Shaun has been working for well over a decade. “They understand and deliver what I expect every time, and lately we’ve been accorded recognition for our work with a 2024 Registered Master Builders Gold Medal Award in the value range of $1-$1.5 million for a four-bedroom home at West Melton,” Shaun says. Shaun got into the residential construction industry straight out of high school, landing a carpentry apprenticeship with Doug Joyce Building in Temuka, South Canterbury, and coming out of his time in 1998. He then shot off to Australia for two or three years, but always wanted to come home to Canterbury where he worked for another builder until his wife Ilfe challenged him to launch his own company. The first home Shaun Rabbidge Builders completed on its own account was a 150sqm house in Darfield, and that job snowballed into many others in the district, followed by further jobs in the MacKenzie Country and the greater Canterbury region. Shaun and Ilfe have two young sons, and an early priority for them was to build their own home in Okuku, which took Shaun three years of night and weekend work. “Typical builder with a young family, I had to work for myself during the usual hours, then build my own home with such spare time as I had left, but the reward was that we had a place, a home for the generations,” he says. Shaun says that his point of difference in a market that has seemed crowded over the past couple of years is “the quality we bring to our products, our honesty and integrity and our detailed pricing, with our clients all knowing that if there’s anything not right with the job, we’ll put it right,” he says. That approach has seen Shaun Rabbidge Builders remaining busy, Shaun says, despite the recent crunch in building demand. He hasn’t had the difficulties other builders have experienced with labour shortages, and he considers himself “very fortunate” with the crew of builders he has who “do their best work every day of the week”. With so much experience in the industry behind him, Shaun is in a strong position to evaluate the standards of the young builders following him into the industry, and to build on them. “Over the years I’ve seen a difference emerge in the quality of tradesmen in our industry, and this has made me passionate about training young apprentices the right way, so I’m passing down the knowledge from the older generation, while at the same time taking pleasure in watching them develop,” he says. Gold medal a mark of quality Featured on
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