It's an amazing journey. What I mean, the story is an amazing story.
The first safety product was handrail around Stairvoids. Two years into the handrail, you
know, the builder started wanting the voids covered. It just grew. Four of us to start
with. Probably growing that to, or nationally now, probably 400.
The orange and yellow everywhere and there's signs all over the place. Build safe, build
safe. You know you've achieved something.
I've always wanted to live on the Gold Coast. I just thought I'd get up there and have a
crack. It was like a dog with a bone.
Stayed with my best mate Grant, sleeping on his couch and just started ringing builders.
Every day ringing builders. We used to ring ten a day every single day. We would sell
a job and then we would stay up all night in the garage building the equipment and then
we'd go out the next morning and install it. So painting them, loading them into a trailer,
they're not even dry yet, they're still wet. It was just a crazy journey.
What we wanted to bring to the scaffold industry was professionalism.
Safety wasn't on the radar at all. Safety just wasn't an issue that was even spoken
about then. You don't want to do it work. Most young tradesmen that don't anticipate
they're going to have an accident. It's a hats off to the industry as well because
the mentality has changed. I spoke to a roofer one time and he came up
to me and thanked me so much for putting the rail up as he'd come off from the top of the roof
and the rail saved him. Trades can go home safely at night to their families and that's
just you know for us that's a good day. They are about safety but they're also about
increasing productivity and making it easier for the guys to work. It's just a smarter program
behind the build. Anyone can have a good product out there but it's got to be backed up with
good service. There's no question we service better than anybody.
No matter what the builder needed we could say we've got a solution for you.
There's a real sense of wanting to see how you know the guys that work for us
grow and succeed as we did. Men's mental health that's been a big
focus for BuildSafe. A couple of years ago they did lose one of
their fellow workers. 18 to 44 is a critical age group within
Australia for suicide. John came on board about two years ago
mentoring leadership counseling. I think BuildSafe are unique in the way that
they approach staff welfare. A few boys like they've come from nothing like
struggling living week to week. It's like a family here I've been looked after
like and been shown sort of the right way. These guys out there that will say
BuildSafe saved me. It's a no brainer. Yeah if you've got happy people at work
you're running a better business. I thought this is a company that
I'd like to be a part of. A completely different culture and level of respect
and appreciation for the employees than I've really experienced before.
It's definitely a career it's not just a job. There's always that drive and
the love for the company enough to you know go above and beyond.
Whether they look after you know you do the right thing you you'll definitely
go places. It is more of a family orientated than a
than a corporate one. It's about doing life with
people you enjoy being around. It's got a good friendship going on it's
pretty pretty awesome. Our success will really be defined by
the people who have been a part of the journey.
So the start of 2016 we expanded into Sydney. So that's
very exciting. We launched BuildSafe commercial last month.
Yeah massive projects straight away and so the world's getting around town
really quickly with what we can do and how we can do it. It feels good to see
what we've done what we've built. Branches up and down the East Coast.
I do take a huge sense of pride in seeing you know what it's grown into.
The success of the business now to where we were 13 years ago
with one year in a trailer and a couple of guys. It's really cool.
