The saga of a southern man

Trevor Tattersfield’s long career has been a roller-coaster ride few other contractors have experienced.   BY GAVIN RILEY

Six years ago Trevor Tattersfield retired from his job as general manager of Invercargill-based contracting company SouthRoads and he and his wife Marie moved to Queenstown where, only weeks later, he received life membership of the Contractors’ Federation.

But he didn’t walk off quietly into the sunset, as the above suggests. Far from it.

The 68-year-old father of three and grandfather of eight today works as a part-time consultant managing Queenstown Lakes District Council’s network maintenance contract, is a director of three contracting companies, was a judge in last year’s federation construction awards, is the leader of a jazz group he founded more than a quarter of a century ago, is a social golfer, and is president of Queenstown Rotary Club – a movement he has been involved in for the past 30 years.

It’s now half a century since Tattersfield left Southland Boys’ High and, encouraged by his father who wanted him to have a secure job, joined Southland County Council as an engineering cadet. During many of those 50 years he experienced currents and eddies in the construction industry to a degree which few other contractors can claim to match.

In the early 1990s, through no fault of his, he even found himself on the outer with the Contractors’ Federation, an organisation to which he gave years of service in two stints embracing four decades, and which elected him president from 1998-2000.

Tattersfield views the twists and turns in his long career with an equanimity which befits a southern man (more about that later). And he’s proud of what he helped achieve for his fellow contractors.

“One of the things I did in my early days [as convenor of the federation’s local government committee] was to organise a series of seminars by consultant Michael Barker that were a precursor to the Clyde Dam contract going to tender,” he says.

“We did a road show round New Zealand trying to convince local authorities what it cost to run plant and equipment, and that was the start of the whole process of getting local government, and central government, out of the construction business. It was a very difficult exercise to prove actual costs because they had such shared buying power.”

Fifteen years later Tattersfield, as federation president, was a member of an industry working party that negotiated more workable competitive pricing procedures for Transit contracts.

“As a result of all that we took up the baton and promoted a prequalification scheme for contractors. It took time and a lot of lobbying. Some of the bigger players weren’t in favour of it. In fact, it stimulated the resignation of Fulton Hogan from the federation.

“The scheme has a lot of merit. It has saved clients and contractors many millions of dollars. My understanding is it’s working well in the Transit area.

“But I’m disappointed the federation hasn’t taken it up and promoted it through the local-government area. They’re still using the old weighted attributes, which is just a make-work scheme for consultants.”

Tattersfield is pleased to see that under new chief executive Jeremy Sole, the federation is to seek more local-government work for its members. “I’m disappopinted it didn’t happen earlier. Local government is our biggest market, as I kept saying when I was in the chair.”

He says he is concerned at the dominance of big contractors, particularly in the maintenance market. “If you go through the whole country, but particuarly the South Island, there are not many maintenance contracts that are not held by the two major players.”

Tattersfield’s views are those of a battle-hardened veteran, whose career took off as far back as the mid-1960s.

While he was with Southland County Council – the largest roading authority in the country – he supervised the main resealing contract, held by McLoughlin Asphalts. The day he returned from a six-month tour of the United States as a cornet player with the New Zealand Brass Band in 1966, Tom McLoughlin offered him a job in Wellington as a contracts manager. Tattersfield (“I’d had my eyes opened to the ways of the world”) jumped at the chance.

“In those days there was huge growth going on. We did the Hutt Road, median barriers, Ngauranga Gorge and Thorndon flyover. It was huge experience for a young fellow.”

Despite the activity in the capital, in 1974 Tattersfield happily returned to Invercargill to manage a McLoughlin subsidiary, Bitumen Distributors. “It was going home to some extent. Southland’s a great place.”

It was just as well the 33-year-old felt that way because he returned to a 24-degree frost. He also had to overcome several chilling challenges: raising the contract rates paid by the county council (settled with the chairman over a scotch), expanding the company and breaking the monopoly Fairfield Asphalt (now Fulton Hogan) had on asphalt work in Invercargill, and fielding industrial strife fomented by the Drivers’ Union.

But it was a successful era for Bitumen Distributors, the major roading contractor in Southland, and Tattersfield even found the time and energy to chair the Southland branch of the Contractors’ Federation from 1976-80 and become a member of the national executive from 1979.

In 1983 Bitumix took over the McLoughlin group and Tattersfield moved to Christchurch to become his new employer’s South Island manager. He wasn’t happy with either the merger or the move – though he admits the promotion was a huge career opportunity.

“We set up new ventures in Queenstown, Nelson and Dunedin. Working at that level in the market, working for a major corporate, was great experience. But it wasn’t particularly enjoyable.

“Bitumix took over McLoughlin and they were both owned by BP. It should have been the other way around – it should have been a reverse takeover. Bitumix was never really highly successful after that and was eventually bought by Works Infrastructure.”

In the late 1980s Tattersfield’s career took a couple of bumpy turns. First, he became inaugural chairman of the breakaway Bitumen Contractors’ Association (now Roading New Zealand), which for political reasons ruled out his chance to become the Contractors’ Federation’s next president. Then Bitumix wanted him to relocate to Auckland to work at its head office – which he didn’t want to do. 

“At that time I had been on Southland District Council’s establishment board to recommend whether the works operation should become a LATE. We had some very good people on that board, including [transport operator and concrete producer] Bill Richardson,” he says.

“We eventually recommended there was a place in the market. Southland was one of the biggest authorities in New Zealand in terms of network and resources, both plant and people. We recommended it would be commercially viable, subject to getting suitable management – which was where I came in.

“They asked me to go back to Invercargill and set things up. I agreed.”

Tattersfield became general manager of the LATE, SouthRoads, in 1991 – a ground-breaking role for a contractor.

“The difficult task was turning what was a local-body workforce into a commercially oriented competitive business,” he says.

“It was a huge job. We made some really significant changes from day one. It wasn’t easy but that’s what we did. Then, of course, I got excommunicated by all my Contractors’ Federation mates.”

He did indeed. Invited to the federation’s 1992 conference in Dunedin to explain what a local-authority trading enterprise was all about, the former vice-president encountered a degree of hostility. Delegates reversed a year-old decision and allowed former state-owned enterprise Works Civil Infrastructure to become a member – but they were highly suspicious of new-fangled LATES, which they regarded as having an unfair edge over contractors through their acquisition of council plant and work.

Tattersfield fought back in a straight-shooting way contractors understand and respect. He stood up and said he had thought seriously of declining the invitation to speak because of “the tirade of abuse and criticism we’ve had coming out of your head office in the last year or so”. Contractor reported: “He came, he spoke, he seemed to enjoy the experience, and he met up with old friends who greeted him…well, like an old friend.”

SouthRoads joined the federation in 1995 and Tattersfield was re-elected to the national executive two years later and became president a year after that. But his career hadn’t quite finished twisting and turning. In 1996 Southland District Council decided to sell SouthRoads.

The buyer, for $10.8 million, was Bill Richardson, later named in the media as the South Island’s richest man and someone Tattersfield had known since his schooldays. Richardson (who died suddenly in 2005 aged 64) had been on the SouthRoads board when it began as a LATE but had resigned because of a perceived conflict of interest with his companies – a conflict Tattersfield says didn’t exist.

“He eventually bought the company and it worked out well because we had no board of directors ­– there was only him and me. Bill’s operations were really flatly structured. We were able to do our own thing. Quick decisions could be made over a cup of coffee or a phone call.

“I recall that when he was looking at buying SouthRoads, I was in his office and we’d been going through some figures. I left the office and was about half a block away when the car phone went and it was Bill. He was always a man of few words. He said: ‘Trevor, are you interested in this thing?’ And I said: ‘Sure.’ And he said: ‘Because I’m not if you’re not.’ End of conversation.

“Bill had no strategic or corporate plans. He was a seat-of-the pants opportunist. But he was hugely successful.”

As Southland has prospered, SouthRoads has thrived as a fully-fledged roading and civil-engineering contractor employing up to 150 staff.  At one stage it maintained more than 10 percent of New Zealand’s roading network and in 2002 won a Contractors’ Federation construction award for its sealing, earthworks, drainage and replacement of six bridges along the 18.5 kilometres Crown Range road. The sealing subcontractor was Bitumix/Works Infrastructure.

The $5.8 million design-build project, one of the first to be carried out under the quality-price trade-off system, was completed nearly one year ahead of schedule despite the inhospitable environment and a massive $2 million washout which set the job back six months.

“Engendering a private-sector outlook among the staff in a short period of time was the key to our success,”  Tattersfieldsays succinctly.

Not one to blow his own trumpet, you may think. Ah, but he does – as the founder and a member of the Southern Dixie jazz group, which has been blowing up a storm in the south of the South Island since 1983 and played at the Noosa jazz festival across the Tasman as recently as last September.

Tattersfield comes from a musical family, learned to play the violin as a child, became a cornet player at high school, went on two overseas tours with the New Zealand Brass Band, and has been a member of various orchestras. He is something of a jazz historian and has been inspired by such trumpeters as Louis Armstrong, Harry James, Clark Terry and latterly James Morrison; and to a lesser degree by Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

Tattersfield’s passion for music will outlast his work. “When work dries up in a couple of years, I’ll go on playing.  And I’ve been asked to teach the playing of brass-band instruments at the local high school,” he says enthusiastically.