Nominated in Rotorua for the 2001 Business of the Year Award, Amalgamated Roofing signed up to a scrutiny process that has reaped long term benefits for the company. The nomination led to months of detailed work with the company’s accountants on systems and processes that questioned every aspect of the business and “really forced us to examine what we did well and what we needed to improve on”, says Donald.

Jim Humphrey	Rob Potts

“ I don’t think many businesses in the construction industry would be involved in this type of award. It’s a lot of work but we definitely benefited setting up system manuals, staff training, task analysis and daily work practice sheets, provision of a business plan, improving our vehicle fleet and investment in equipment.

“ We made the finals again in 2003 and that experience led us to establish Team and Customer Advisory Boards, facilitated by our accountants to find out more about what we did well and how we could improve.”

The staff took part in the team advisory boards and a cross section of customers, with the customer advisory boards. An independent analysis of the responses enabled management to consider common themes and identify areas that needed attention.

More spin off from the awards came when Vanessa Taikato, who had been doing Amalgamated Roofing’s work for the accountancy firm was targeted to join the team as Office Manager following the birth of her second child. Maria and Vanessa plan to job share the office roles as this year progresses, while Kirsty Dyball the third member of the office team is on six months maternity leave.

office Manager, Vanessa Taikato (left) and Kirsty Dyball	Jeff Moulder, Manager, Hastings branch

Accountant Vanessa says she had not previously worked in a company where every person employed was good at their job and it has impressed her that deployment of staff has been so effective.

Back to the business awards, Donald says the nomination forced him to set targets and the process shaped the direction of the business from that point.

“ In our first business plan (late 2000) we set targets of where we wanted to be in 10 years and we achieved all those targets in five years,” he says.” In our second business plan (late 2004) we have looked longer term and set our targets for the next 15 years.

“ We have introduced one-on-one assessments and have really focussed on job descriptions and daily work practices sheets. Through training and giving the guys more responsibility things have started to change.

“ The roofers, armed with the skills and knowledge they have acquired, will challenge a builder about a substandard roof framing work and dodgy scaffold, they know exactly what their tool kit should be and where their responsibilities lie. Making roles and responsibilities directional for everyone is one of the best things we did and we’ve helped them with time management of their jobs giving them a job and setting a time in which we expect them to complete it. Nine times out of 10 they pump out the work in the required time.”

The company’s major contract for 2006 will be the $1.2 million roof on Rotorua Energy Events Centre for main contractor Mainzeal. Half the Rotorua-based Amalgamated Roofing team are expected to be working on this project for the next 7 – 8 months.