At Tallai, our people and their experience are a key component of our success.
This month we sat down with our Operations Manager, Andrew Dunbar, to hear how his construction experience shapes the way he operates and share a little about life outside of Tallai.
Andrew, you have an impressive resume of experience in the construction industry. What’s been your most rewarding career moment to date?
You know, I’ve been rewarded significantly out of the construction industry. When I look back in my career, the projects where I had the most enjoyment was when I had a good team, and the team had a good relationships.
A fundamental offering I suppose is that I’m about building relationships, whether it be with clients, our own team, our subcontractors and own people on the ground. I think back to projects where I had good relationships, the Coffs Infrastructure Alliance that was a really good team, a memorable team. That’s where I first met Megan Haylock, who’s with Tallai up in QLD. There were many good teams and rewarding projects, but a suppose another memorable moment would be my time at Origin, where I worked with Paul, Matt, Tam and yourself Luke and the relationships built on that project was one of the one of my highlights.
Working closely with CPB Contractors developing a different contracting model, focused on collaboration between client and contractor. And not just developing the model, but actually delivering that for the first time. We had some really, really good relationships with our contractor and the people involved in the project and that I think from a satisfaction perspective, yeah, was really good.
Just further to that, that’s why I think my background suits what Tallai is, because it’s a lot about relationships, a lot about collaboration. It fits in with what our objectives are moving forward as a business, you know we’re growing, and you know I think the foundation of that growth is going to be on relationships and our ability to collaborate so.
Well, you have already mentioned Megan, Paul, Matt, Tam and myself – you have been involved with our people at Tallai for some time, what excited you most to come on board as Operations Manager?
When we first spoke about it some time ago, the thing that that really attracted me, was the passion for the business and the desire to take Tallai not to the next level, but to a level that we probably can’t even think about just at the moment. With you and Tam having enough foresight to actually look at developing Tallai to a level where it needed further structure, needed for lack of a better word, grey hair. And without that, it was going to be hard to develop it to that ultimate level.
I’ve been involved previously with Paul and Matt, in the consultancy side of business, back five or six years ago, just before you and Tam got involved. We had some discussions back then but that never really got anywhere. But it’s the passion and momentum in the business now, particularly seeing how Tallai has transformed over the past four years is why I’m excited!
It’s exciting to have you here!
As you mentioned, you have joined at an exciting time; where we are a young business yet growing at a rapid pace, what are some of the challenges you see in maintaining our growth, reputation and relationships? And what as Operations Manager are some of the aspect you see we need to focus on.
So, I think we’ve spoken about this already to a degree, but I suppose some of the challenges taking the small business to a big business, is our systems and infrastructure and processes within the business. What I see in Tallai is this it has the infrastructure and the structure of a much bigger business and that comes as a result of the people that are involved in the business.
Yourself, Tam Paul and Matt with the background in larger companies previously, in particular Paul’s experience with Abi Group and John Hollands. They are all Tier 1 Contractors and the fact that we’ve got structured systems scaled and suitable for Tallai but reflective of a Tier 1 business.
One of the actions that I’ve been working on with some of the team is around systems, and the way I’ve put it to a few people is around tuning the systems to make sure that they help us evolve as a business, be relevant in what we do and grow suitably.
The other focus area is Unification as a business. There’s been a significant growth in Tallai over the last four years with the construction which you know, has been driven from NSW. This evolution has now moved to QLD with near enough to $60 million worth of work in hand in QLD. The dynamic of the business now is going to be different, and I think for us to evolve, we need to now pull together in the same direction and make sure that we’re minimising the duplication.
Well, that is Tallai’s Strategic Plan drafted for the next year. Thank you for that. And I know those conversations are already starting and already happening, which is exciting.
You mentioned ‘Gray Hair’ earlier, If you were to pass on some work related advised to a younger ‘Andrew’ starting out his career, what would it be.
It is probably the advice that I’ve passed on to young Luke and the young Tam previously actually. Along the lines of you know, find a balance where you can enjoy your young family. I certainly invested a lot of time in my career, and probably missed some of the things and know now that I would have enjoyed spending some more time with the family I don’t regret it, but I have reflected on it.
So, if it was giving myself some advice, the age old saying that I’ve sort of come up with or heard before, … it’s not he who does the most hours wins. Be a bit more productive and try to be a little selfish to yourself, so that you actually make time for yourself.
Thanks for sharing that, and that is so applicable in life.
At Tallai , we have our Core Values, actually on the wall behind us, which are Safety, Surety, Value, Collaboration and Integrity – can you talk about one of our Values and the importance it has in the way you work?
All of those values come back to how you build relationships with people. So rather than talk about one, I think you know you can actually tie relationships into every single one of those values. Safety is about creating relationships with people, whether it be, a supervisor or a person on the ground or digger operator, whatever it is you create a relationship, not to lean , but so you can be honest, you can have that conversation with them if they are putting themselves at risk and go home.
I have seen the evolution of safety from my 30+ years in construction from the policemen mentality to hands off to back to where we are now. The Visible Leadership Training we did at Origin with Ralph Shreeve, I mean that just reinforced the importance of relationships and communication in how you get the best out of people. Relationships is across every single Core Value of Tallai’s: Collaboration, for instance. Collaborating in design, collaborating with the team, with the client, collaborating with your own team on site, collaborating with their subcontractors to get better outcomes.
And again, Relationship fits very tightly with Integrity. You know, we actually deliver on what we actually say, that’s what gives you good relationship. That’s one of the things that I reflect on, how Tallai has come so far over the last four years, is because you’ve delivered on your commitments with integrity and people value that, clients value that.
Paul and Matt in the past have done the same thing and they get a lot of repeat business from their integrity and you, and Tam have taken that to the next level with the projects you have delivered.
We’re happy to have you here, you are obviously passionate about the work you do and the relationships you form as a result of that, what are the things that make you tick outside of work?
Having over 30 years of construction and 30 years of kids growing up, your priorities evolve. 10 years ago, it was all about fishing, I have had amazing moments with my three kids, all going fishing and we did some pretty cool stuff as a family. Unfortunately, Katrina is not that fond of the boat, but the three kids all went fishing and they’ve all caught big fish, and they’ve all enjoyed it.
Now, I still enjoy fishing, I still have a boat and enjoy getting out on the water whenever the opportunity comes about. But now Katrina and I also have the joy of having a grandson and I am loving spending time with him and trying to, I suppose instil some of what the moments, memories and values that I had with our own kids to him.
One of the things that I suppose we did for our kids was give them lots of experiences. We moved around a little bit with work being Sydney, when the kids were only young. We moved to Jindabyne and it was all about skiing and had the opportunity of two seasons at.
Then Coffs Harbour, we had pretty cool experiences fishing and game fishing. They got opportunities to sit in helicopters and the roulettes and, you know, going to the roulettes into their planes. You know, I think that the opportunities the kids had moving around, experiencing different places and friend groups actually helps them grow into more robust and rounded individuals.
Mostly what I do is for my family. I certainly get satisfaction out of our time together. We are now gearing up to spend a bit more time camping, 4wding and doing those sort of things, which the kids enjoy doing also, Lauren and Riley in particular. Just spending time my family, really.
Thanks Andrew.
