Taylor made

The big forestry developments of the 1970s in the Nelson region were what gave Taylors Contracting its start in commercial life, but now the Brightwater-based family firm is extending its reach across the whole of the upper South Island.   By HUGH DE LACY.

Bob Taylor, the father of the New Zealand Contractors Federations’ immediate past president, Charlie Taylor, got Taylors Contracting off the ground in 1971 when he recognised the opportunities for land clearing and new forestry planting. His first machine was a Fiat Allis 14B bulldozer with which he paved the way for the planting of thousands of hectares of Nelson forests. A generation later the company he founded offers, as one of its key commercial activities, specialised support services for the harvesters of some of those very same trees.

Bob Taylor died eight years ago but his widow, Marlene, chairs the family company of which sons Charlie and Matt are chief executive and operations manager respectively. Charlie Taylor’s specialties are management systems, project and contract management, and bidding and estimating. Matt Taylor is in charge of staff, plant and site management, quality controls, construction sequencing and, highly important to this company, health, safety and environmental management.

Operationally the company comprises two divisions: contracting managed by Nick Mayall and forestry managed by Mike Fahey. Mayall holds an New Zealand Certificate in Engineering while Fahey holds a practice certificate in civil engineering works supervision and project management.

Though the main activity of Taylors Contracting today is earthmoving, it still retains the forestry connection.

“The forestry scene’s changed a bit and our forestry division is now involved in construction of forest roads and landings – all the infrastructure – and maintenance after harvesting,” Charlie Taylor told Contractor. “We’ve got a full package that offers clients everything from design and construction through to maintenance during harvest and then a post-harvest clean-up. Most of the work is still around Nelson but we go as far afield as Marlborough and Canterbury.”

In the company’s early years Bob Taylor kept the accent on forestry until it was hit with one of its cyclical downturns, at which point he decided to see what the new-fangled excavation machines were about, and bought a Hitachi UH03DT.

“It was a relatively big machine at the time, but it would look small by today’s standards,” Charlie Taylor says.

If excavators changed the face of civil construction, they also both changed the focus of Taylors Contracting and underwrote the company’s recent expansion beyond the Nelson region. About three years ago Taylors set up a Canterbury office with the major project being the huge Kate Valley landfill at Waipara for Transwaste, the Hurunui, Waimakariri and Selwyn District Councils and Christchurch City.

Taylors was part of an alliance led by Fulton Hogan Group Projects that included Christchurch earthmoving contractor Taggarts. The award-winning landfill involved Taylors moving 700-800,000 cubic metres of dirt.

Kate Valley was not the company’s first job of such a scale. In 2000, and also as a sub-contractor to Fulton Hogan Group Projects, Taylors moved a similar volume of earth during the Stoke by-pass project at Nelson, which involved the construction of 7.5 kilometres of new urban state highway.

The Kate Valley connection is continuing, with Taylors’ Christchurch branch winning another contract there, this one for 650,000 cubic metres of earthworks over the coming summer.

About 12 months ago Taylors set up a new branch office in Marlborough, and its main function has been to assist in the massive vineyard expansion that’s rapidly changing the landscape around Blenheim. In the past year Taylors have prepared about 500 hectares for grape-vines – work that also involved building a succession of irrigation dams in the drought-prone region.

Back home in Nelson the focus has also been on changing land uses, much of it from forestry back into pastoral farming, pipfruit orchards and rural residential sub-divisions. Net annual deforestation nationwide may be putting the wind up the Government as it contemplates the mounting future cost of carbon emissions, but it’s providing plenty of work for contractors in Nelson and elsewhere converting former forests to more valuable and intensive uses.

Early major projects Taylors Contracting completed in the Nelson area included the 805,000-litre Wai-Iti Community Dam at Wakefield, which involved 195,000 cubic metres of earthworks and the creation of a 22 metre-high by 320 metre-long dam wall. Dams have been a recurring theme for Taylors: In 2001 the company built one for the noted Nelson winery Seifriends that involved 200,000 cubic metres of earthworks and associated fill/draw-off pipework, and an overflow spillway with low-flow controls and a full-height chimney drain. This dam was built on a Moutere clay base that had been exposed during initial excavation. It was compacted with clay and gravels with the central chimney drain installed to control seepage.

That sort of design-and-build work is a lot more complicated than just digging a big hole, and it’s part of the Taylors strategy to retain staff with specialised expertise in both compaction and surveying. Taylors does its own compaction lab-testing in-house, using nuclear densomometers that measure density by firing a tiny shot of radiation into the soil. The service is backed up by ISO:9001 accreditation.

Taylors employs its own surveyor who uses both traditional total station and GPS survey equipment for topographical, construction set-out and as-built surveying. This technology is supplemented by the GPS Site Vision system on the company’s bulldozers, motor-scrapers and excavators, allowing the drivers to view the design on an on-board screen in various three-dimensional formats, and the actual machine position.

If technology such as this is a key marketing tool for Taylors, so is having up-to-date equipment.

“My father always used to say, ‘You can’t do a proper job with junk,’ and we continue that policy in our plant replacement strategy today,” Charlie Taylor says. The inventory of major plant is impressive: 14 excavators with operating weights of between 20 and 60 tonnes, eight bulldozers from 10 to 60 tonnes, six dump trucks of 25-50 tonnes capacity, six soil compactors of 10 to 40 tonne operating weight, three graders, five motor-scrapers of 14 to 26 cubic metre capacity and two 23 cubic metre towed scrapers.

Each of Taylors Contracting’s three branches has its own inventory of core machines, but efficiency in plant utilisation is otherwise ensured by a pool system. The company also has a preference for owning its plant rather than hiring it.

“We’re equipment owners and we prefer to acquire plant as demand dictates, rather than placing any great reliance of renting gear,” Taylor says.

He places great score too on the value of the Contractors’ Federation to the civil engineering industry. Taylor served for four years as chairman of the Nelson-Marlborough branch before being elevated to national vice-president three years ago. He served as national president from 2005 until August this year, when he stood down. He sees the federation’s role as vital in lobbying the Government over industry issues – “and they do that very well,” he says.

With annual turnover hovering around the $10 million mark and with over 50 permanent staff, Taylors Contracting is already a significant player in the upper half of the South Island. And with its success assured by its emphasis on quality staffing, machinery and performance, it may not be long before it expands even further.

All articles on this website are copyright to Contrafed Publishing Co. Ltd.