Industry Expert - OTEN/Rotary Career Interview Series - Building Construction

 

BACKGROUND & CAREER

I’m a structural engineer by training, I finished – I finished training at Sydney University in the 70’s, but I joined a specialist contracting company soon after that and worked in that and a few years later I started my own construction company.

In the same business, which was Post Tension, and I ran that business for some years by myself and then subsequently gained a friend’s sharehold and all together I ran that business for 30 years. It was probably the second largest Post Tension company in Australia, when I left the company.

CURRENT INDUSTRY CONTEXT

The industry at the moment, we are talking about 2011, is in an interesting state, for a number of reasons.

One is there has been a

GREAT DEAL OF CONSOLIDATION AT THE TOP END and you will all of heard of companies such as leighton's and Teece and Hollands and companies of that size and type.

They’re essentially now totally overseas owned, so at the top end of the market – the construction market, not so much the building market – that is entirely overseas owned and it operates very much on a sub contract basis and basically those companies, those large companies are essentially construction managers and they employ sub contract companies to do the physical work.

Much the same applies in the building industry, except that there are a larger amount of companies and by and large they’re not  foreign owned.

At the moment there is a shortage of availability of funds for infra-structure. The commercial office building market is, at the moment, fairly quiet, but the building market for the units is fairly strong.

I think that will continue, there's population growth and I think there is further consolidation of the market. People are moving back into the cities, because of travel times and costs and consequently they are, they’re  more interested in buying units and town houses and the like than before and so that, I think, will be the direction in which, at least the residential industry heads, there’ll still be expansion into the suburbs, but I think this will be inevertably slow.

Of course the other thing that will cause residential building to move ahead is de-centralisation, for instance I’ve been in Goulburn recently, I've been to Orange recently and both cities are growing quite quickly in terms of population and in residential expansion of normal residential homes, so, that’s (ahh) – that’s probably where, for the present at least, the future lies in that form of construction.

INDUSTRY ADVICE & TIPS

You have a number of choices.

You can join a, let’s say a home builder and do whatever they require of you.

You can join one of the larger companies and with the prospect of at least starting off, on sites and then perhaps moving on to a project management role and then perhaps a management role.

I think from my experience theBEST SINGLE TIP I COULD GIVE YOU, if anyone’s studying building or engineering or a similar disapline, is at some stage to also, and this is very important, ALSO STUDY MANAGEMENT OR COMMERCE OR BUSINESS.
That type of rounded training will give you a much better propects for the future in terms of job promotion and job satisfaction – I think, because you know you come to a stage in your life where you don’t want to be on sites any more, or you want to be doing other things and that, that educational background, whether you do it straight after what you do here or whether you do it subsequently, is still going to be very valuable to you and, as a sideline, it will increase your salary prospects significantly, so that’s my tip.

NETWORKING

I would consider networking as probably your single most effective way of staying within the full knowledge of the industry that you’re in.

In other words, keeping up with the latest developments and trends and so on.

But also in looking for new opportunities, if that’s what you are – are doing at the time.

MOST GOOD POSITIONS, REALLY THESE DAYS COME UP THROUGH NETWORKING, rather than advertising or, other than of course, internal promotion.

So networking’s a very valuable tool, apart from what ever social benefits it delivers to you.

Rotary is an organisation which is primarly aimed at doing good things in the community and helping people raising some funds for various charities, some charitable initiatives as well and is a network of it’s own, but strickly speaking, Rotary is not a business network. It is a group of people with a common goal of doing good things within society.

It used to have more of a commercial edge, but of course people join Rotaries – there would be a Real estate agent, or a doctor or whatever, joining and they were all from an area and they worked together.

There is still a large element of that, and if you feel you want to do good things within the community, help others, then I think Rotary is an excellent organisation to join and be a part of.

You can become a part of it to whatever degree you like. You can spend as much or as little time doing things with it as you like, but it’s certainly a way of giving back something to the community.
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