The big eye opener for me happened today. I had a chat with a lovely lady who has a son who wants to be a builder, her reaction was quite surprising to me and she told me “I don’t know if I want my son to be a builder, there’s not a lot of trust for builders. We had a terrible experience with a builder and many of our friends have also had bad experiences. I’m worried for him”.

I grew up in a family business where my dad promoted integrity and honesty with his clients, a trait that I am proud to say that I adopted and value highly. Where did it all change?

The past eight to ten years have seen me working in the larger Industrial and commercial sector so I have been away from the residential market for a little while. Recently I have been fortunate enough to meet some people in the residential market who have built or are building at the moment and the feedback is always interesting. The unfortunate part is that majority of the stories are not positive.

I have heard stories that are similar to that told to me today by the worried mum, stories about poor quality, hidden costs, the builder or contractor not being honest and open about the process, bullying and intimidation by builders and the list goes on.

So what do I do, I’m just 1 builder in a large industry? I could just say “oh well, that’s the industry I suppose”, or, I could decide to make a change….. so that’s what I have done, I have spent some time developing free information for people who want to build. Not DIY info on how to tile your bathroom, this is relevant information to help open their eyes to the crap that’s running through the industry.

There are a lot of great builders and contractors out there, I am fortunate to work with a lot of these guys. The problem is that the good ones get washed out by all the noise created by the bad ones. It’s time to give the consumers real information to protect them and by doing this, we can work together to get rid of the rubbish. It is going to be a long road but a road that I am more than happy to walk.

I am definitely one of the lucky ones, I am able to work in an industry that I love, an industry that I am passionate about and an industry that challenges me on a regular basis but most of all it is in an industry worth fighting for.

Is there something in your industry that rubs you the wrong way? What are you prepared to do to make the change?