Fifty years in the trenches

Graeme Blackley takes a look at his career and the industry in general as he and his company mark a half-century in contracting.   BY GAVIN RILEY

There could be a better time to celebrate your company’s 50th birthday than during an economic recession – but it’s not something that fazes Graeme Blackley (pictured right), head of Blackley Construction in Palmerston North.

Such is the depth of his industry experience and service that he long ago learned to accept contracting’s rollercoaster ride of booms and busts. He’s been Manawatu contractors’ chairman, national president (at different times) of the rural and civil contractors’ federations, was the inspiration behind the national excavator operator competition, has been a judge of the Hirepool construction awards for the past six years, and for an equal term was a director of Contrafed Publishing Co.

Today’s contracting environment may be more complex, competitive and uncertain than it was when Graeme embarked on his life’s work half a century ago, but back then it wasn’t necessarily easier or better. The Ministry of Works was a monolithic state rival to a private sector that often found itself unable to obtain the most suitable machine for a particular job.

Fortunately, Graeme served a motor-mechanic apprenticeship, a qualification he found immensely useful in adapting machinery after he became a self-employed drainage contractor with digger and tractor in the Wairarapa in 1960.

His intention was that four years of contracting would pay for a farm. Instead, he secured land-drainage work from the Department of Agriculture then in 1965 moved to the Manawatu, a base from which he was able to do similar work for farmers over a wide area amid a national drive for farm development.

He acquired a drainage machine that would dig and lay tiles, then with a loan from the Rural Bank bought New Zealand’s first laser-controlled drainage machine which he mounted in his workshop on the back of an HD5. In 1969 the company moved to Stoney Creek Road, a few kilometres north of Palmerston North, and extended the scope of its operations.

“We had a fairly wide diversification of work types,” Graeme says. “We did trenching, excavation, directional drilling, pipelines, and a lot of agricultural work. We were forerunners in using lasers on equipment, and we upgraded our equipment fleet by building or rebuilding it.

“You couldn’t buy equipment such as trenching machines back then so we built our own. I guess it was the ability to think outside the square and make it happen.”

He recalls visiting Linton camp and looking at the array of diggers and backhoes there. “No contractor was able to buy the equipment the Army owned. I told the then Minister of Agriculture that that was detrimental to the economy of the country, because we had to put up with whatever was available or make our own. It was a very poor state of affairs.”

Nevertheless, the Blackley company flourished through the years, helped by a constant core of good people and a Manawatu economy well insulated by the presence of the Army, the Air Force (Ohakea), Massey University, a large dairy company, and the region’s relative nearness to Wellington.

The company’s strength and longevity were further assured by the coming on board at different times of Graeme’s sons (pictured as toddlers below, sitting on a bulldozer), who subsequently put in place their own specialist teams. Today Kevin heads the rural division, Steven civil operations, Murray special projects, and Alan looks after all the plant-maintenance records. Grant Binns has been general manager since 1990, and his background as one-time contracting industry trainer and Contractors’ Federation executive officer has proved useful in promoting Blackley’s trenchless-technology skills to consultants and councils.

Graeme is managing director and in charge of the workshop, but at 72 says he is looking to take “a reasonable step back” in the next year. He has plenty to occupy himself. He has a 58 hectare sheep and beef farm, presently leased, on which he is planting hundreds of trees; he is building himself a new house; and he is president of the New Zealand Military Vehicles Collectors’ Club, owning a 1942 Jeep, a 1942 New Zealand-built bren-gun carrier, a 1942 thirty-hundredweight Chevrolet Cargo truck, which he rebuilt completely, and two General Motors 6x6 trucks.

But for the moment his main focus remains Blackley Construction, which has nearly 40 employees in Palmerston North, about 12 fewer than before the recession, and another seven at East Coast Utilities, a company Blackley took over and strengthened about three years ago and which handles all the group’s trenchless work.

Most contractors can probably tell of a recession body-blow. Blackley’s has been the fall-off in wind farm projects, an area of work in which it specialised in installing all cables from the turbines to the substations as well as placing some of the fibre-optics.

“We’re still doing them [wind farms], we’re doing one at Raglan for Meridian Energy at the moment, but it would be nice if there were more of them around,” Graeme says.

“We thought we were going from the Westwind project in Wellington to Raglan but it took about a year for that to happen and it caught us on the bounce. However, there are still a lot [of wind farm projects] out there to be done.”

Graeme shares the concern expressed in recent years by fellow past presidents of the Contractors’ Federation Jim Juno and Chris Russell that provincial/smaller contractors face a tough future because of competition from major companies from out of town. But Graeme would be reluctant to see local councils reserve a portion of local contracts for local companies in order to keep the local economy strong, attractive though that sounds, because such an arrangement would run counter to the federation’s unswerving belief in free competition.

Besides, Graeme sees a more pernicious problem – that of the undercutting competitor. “We bid for a job recently where the engineer’s estimate was $1.26 million and we were $1.3 million and somebody else walked off with the job for $848,000. You can’t compete with that – and it’s been happening for years. People come in and knock the price out of a very good job and everybody suffers.”

His solution?  “I believe it’s up to the principal. They weight the contractor and his attributes and they must know if he’s capable of doing the job and can do it in such a way that he can make money. I think in a lot of cases the principal should throw out the lowest and the highest prices, because obviously the high ones can make a real killing, and the low ones, where they obviously don’t know what they’re doing, just ruin it for everybody else.

“Councils, if we’re referring to them, are losing sight of the fact that the genuine, salt-of-the-earth contractors who have been there for a long time and have a lot of experience and know what they’re doing, have got to make money too.”

Despite the difficulties facing provincial contractors, after a half-century among them Graeme Blackley has great admiration and respect for their ability to survive and believes more of them should be showcasing their skills in the annual construction awards.

“There are a lot of people out there who should have a go but don’t,” he says. “Some say they don’t want to give away their secrets, but an ideal example is Jim Juno. He’s always doing something he’s very proud of doing and entering it in the awards.

“My advice to good contractors, and most of them are, is that they should all have a go because they all have something to offer to the industry. It’s absolutely mind-boggling how good these guys are.”

Graeme’s favourite Blackley Construction project of the hundreds he has completed over 50 years is the company’s drainage and turfing of the 500-metre circular playing area at the $130 million Westpac Stadium in 1999.

“In terms of presenting a profile to the public that would have to be the one because it’s on TV all the time,” he says. “It’s certainly a project that comes back to me every time we see the stadium. We enjoyed carrying it out.”

Finally, what can Blackley Construction and similar companies do to survive these uncertain times?

“I guess if you’ve got the correct leadership and control on management, workforce and type of work, I don’t you believe you need to be aggressive – but you certainly need to market yourself,” Graeme says.

“Marketing has probably got a bigger effect on your bottom line than anything else. You’ve also got to have good staff, you’ve got to be prepared to step out further, you might have to take some risks, you’ve got to try to set up a partnership with local authorities or whoever else, and you’ve got to be innovative.

“I see this all the time going round the construction awards – the innovative ways these guys do things is something you have to see to believe.

“That’s really the secret of it – be innovative, efficient, market yourself properly, and do the job right first time. Don’t waste horsepower, energy or people re-doing jobs that are not done properly. Near enough’s not good enough.”