My Account
At the end of the construction season last month, Alistair Mason stepped aside from a company he started 40 years ago with “some shovels and picks, a concrete mixer and a ute”. Masons, alongside Wharehine and Rhodes for Roads, has dominated the local construction scene for decades. With his 67th birthday approaching and some body parts starting to show signs of wear and tear, Alistair feels it’s time to go fishing, travel with wife Judy and enjoy his collection of Chevrolet Bel Airs. But the frustrations of dealing with bureaucracy, particularly in the Auckland supercity, and the ever-increasing amount of red tape and regulations involved in getting even simple jobs done, are also a factor, as he explains to Jannette Thompson ….
The supercity has been an absolute bloody disaster for us. None of the work that we used to do even gets offered to local contractors now. It’s all handled be the two big firms – Fulton Hogan and Downers who have area-wide maintenance contracts. At the moment they’re doing a contract at Kaipara Flats which, under the previous Rodney council, we would have at least been given a chance to tender. You don’t expect to be given the job but it frustrates the hell out of me that we don’t get the opportunity to put in a bid. The trouble with what’s happening is that there is absolutely no recognition of what companies like mine, and Wharehine and Rhodes too, have done for our communities over the years. It counts for nothing. I’ve sponsored everything in the Kaipara Village at one time or another – the school, the childcare, the hall, the sports club – you name it, we’ve sponsored it. In fact, if you look around the whole area, we’ve really tried to spread our support around, from schools, sports clubs and hospice to carols by candlelight and the Kowhai Festival. It really rankles the way local contractors are being treated. It’s the bureaucrats running Council, not the elected representatives.
What’s also really annoying is that these big outfits are bringing in subcontractors from outside the area to pick up the overflow. Council says it’s cheaper but we dispute that. The truth is it’s just easier for them. They’re just too bloody lazy to put together tenders to give locals a chance. Council work used to make up a big chunk of our business, but since the amalgamation we’ve only done one small job on a contaminated site. From about 2000 to 2008, we had a construction crew in excess of 50 staff. Now we’re down to about 24. That’s not just council, of course. The last five years have been pretty grim because of a general downturn in the construction industry. We used to budget annually for sponsorship of about $40,000 but we just can’t do it anymore. If you haven’t got the work, you haven’t got the turnover or the profit to make it possible. Other contractors are in the same position – we’re all now competing against one another for the same small pie. The out-of-town firms come here to make a quick buck, don’t employ locals and don’t spend one penny to support the community. The money is just siphoned off. This is something people don’t think about when giving work to out-of-towners.
I had a real passion for business when I started and even though I was often working 12 to 14 hour days, seven days a week, I loved it. One of the main reasons I’m getting out now is that I’m not enjoying it anymore. We’re getting bogged down in so much red tape; it’s taking all the fun out of it. We recently did a small $20,000 trucking job that only took a couple of days, but the contract was 68 pages. There’s a reason for rules and we take our health and safety obligations very seriously, but it’s just going over the top. We’re getting industries built inside the industry by people who are just trying to keep themselves in a job, particularly in health and safety and traffic control.
Apart from six years in Australia, I’ve spent my whole life in this district. We had a dairy farm at Kaipara Flats and I attended Warkworth District High School, played prop for the first XV and represented Rodney in hockey. I worked on the family farm when I left school then got a job with ‘Bubs’ Major, of Kaipara Transport, carting everything from stock to posts and manure. It was all hand loaded so it kept us fit. I had a great time in Australia – it was a bit like my OE. I worked as a barman, in the mines and drove trucks, and for three years, was a partner in a small contracting business on the Sunshine Coast, specialising in site development with a lot of drainage and concrete work. It was a good business and doing well, but I missed home so decided to return to NZ.
I drove for Hood brothers for a while and then a friend wanted some building foundations done. That was more or less the start of the business. In those days, builders did everything themselves but, in Australia, sub-contracting was the big thing. No-one here was specialising in footings and floors and concrete drives, so I guess I could see an opportunity and the builders were quite happy to let someone else do it because it’s bloody hard work. I ended up hiring a guy to give me a hand, then I bought a backhoe and it just sort of grew. The concrete division was sold to Denis Sullivan in 1989 and the timber supplies to Firth Industries, now Timberworld, in 1987, so we could concentrate on contracting and waste operations. Ian Ward and I formed Transcon, in 1991, and took over Warkworth Transport. I left that two years later and went back to core construction and waste work. The waste division was sold to Northland Waste in 2009.
Everything I’ve done has been self-taught. I’ve had the odd costly mistake and there’ve been plenty of sleepless nights when we’ve been close to going under, especially in the days when we were paying 20 percent plus interest on machines. But I’ve been lucky to have great staff – they’re you’re biggest bugbear and your biggest asset. An employer today has to be everything from a marriage guidance counsellor to a financial advisor and mother confessor! Leaving the company is a lot easier knowing that it is in the good hands of existing staff led by Lance O’Callaghan. I’ll continue to do the container side of the business and will be available to assist, if needed.
When we moved more into contracting I was really grateful to have Brian Dodd, a great guy who used to own Wharehine, as a bit of a mentor. He has a wealth of knowledge about the industry and was a huge help. The construction industry is made up of guys like myself, Warwick Rhodes and Brian who started small and built their business from scratch. I guess this might change as we become more dependent on technology. People say to me ‘where would we be without a mobile phone?’ but to me, they’re just a pain in the arse. They’re an excuse for people not being properly organised. Instead of planning ahead, they just pick up the phone and say they want it now. There was a time – I’m talking 30 years ago – that 90 percent of our work was organised in the front bar of the Warkworth Hotel amongst tradies like Selwyn Wenzlick, Ellice Wyatt, Jeff Roper and Neville Noyer. Technology? I got a new laptop and used it as a paperweight for the first two years!
Dad’s (long-standing local government representative Sir Gordon Mason) position on Council was always detrimental to my business, never advantageous. He was pedantic about everything being squeaky clean and above board, so we had to be specially audited in the early days, which was a pain in the butt. Plus, Council employees treated us differently, maybe because they thought I might telltales. I’ve never had any local government aspirations, although I’ve been asked numerous times. I just haven’t got the temperament for it. I couldn’t be in the same room as some of those inept people. But you can’t really complain if you’re not prepared to do it yourself. One of Dad’s favourite sayings was: “If you look after the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves.” I use it too! In the big picture, that’s where your money is made – at the start, not at the end. Mum was the glue in our household and Dad wouldn’t have got anywhere without her. When he bought the farm, he didn’t even know how to milk a cow. During his early local government years, Mum and I kept the farm running. She worked incredibly hard without ever moaning or groaning – all wives should be like that … and I’m very lucky to have one myself!
