Taylored for the job

He has had a long working life of hard toil, industry service and setting high standards, but at 64 veteran aggregate producer Bruce Taylor shows no signs of easing up.   By GAVIN RILEY

Anyone who has been in the workforce for nearly half a century and whose day begins before dawn is likely to have a rock-solid work ethic and impressive knowledge and wisdom about their industry.

In Bruce Taylor’s case the industry has made good use of his expertise and energy. He was president of the Aggregate and Quarry Association from 2004-2007; is still on its national council; is a member of the executive of the extractive industries training organisation, Exito; is chairman of the Tasman Aggregate Users’ Group; and is a past chairman of the Nelson-Marlborough branch of the Contractors’ Federation (of which he is now an honorary member).

All that is over and above his job as Fulton Hogan’s quarries, transport and excavators division manager, where he is always in his Nelson office by 5.30am and his cell phone rings constantly until 9pm – though he allows himself the luxury of switching it off at meal times and for the evening TV news.

Bruce’s work focus is on customers, staff and company and it embraces service, communication, quality, profit, safety and change. He believes:

• A company must look after its customers to the point of exceeding their expectations on quality and service. “Without our customers there is no business, I tell staff. And it costs six times more time to gain a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.”
• Staff are a business’s single most important asset and therefore good employment relations are critical to the success of a business.
• Communication between management and staff at all levels is essential. Bruce maintains an open-door policy that makes his office look like Grand Central Station, given the number of people coming and going. “Information flow up, down and around within an organisation is important so that all know and understand what is happening, where, when, how and why.”
• Too often lip service is paid to quality. Continuous quality improvement is not technology, smart machines or new processes but fully trained, informed and involved company employees working with managers to satisfy customers’ requirements. The rewards for such mutual commitment are increased productivity, lower costs, higher profits, a better return on asset, and improved competitiveness.
• There is short-term profit and long-term profit. The first is what you can make today. The second is the development of a product, service and style that takes time to develop. “In my opinion, companies won’t survive without both.”
• Keeping people safe is of the utmost importance. “Ensure staff acknowledge that if you can’t do the work or task safely, don’t do it – stop and ask.” Everyone has a duty to ensure safety is observed at the highest level.
• Recognising the need for change and implementing it is one of the toughest parts of being a manager “especially in a business like ours”. If you try to fight change, you’ll lose; if you merely go along with it, you’ll never get rich; but if you reach out and embrace it, long term you’ll achieve “heaps”.
• If you make a mistake, own up and focus on putting it right. Trying to cover up a mistake will cost you far more – plus, in many cases, a customer.

The complexities of doing business today are a far cry from Bruce’s modest beginnings when “everything was done by a handshake and your word was your bond”.

Born in 1945 at Collingwood, where his father had a carrying business, he moved with his family in 1957 to a farm at Waimea West, where he attended the local college. His first jobs were operating a bulldozer and doing stock work on a soil-conservation farm, then operating a TD18 tractor-dozer and a cable-blade D8 pushing a Serpentine for local company S R Irvine Ltd.

In late 1963 he joined prominent Nelson building firm C Gibbons Ltd where he ran the crushing plant and drove dozers, Bedford trucks and loaders, until in 1976 he became manager of Gibbons’ Transit Mix Concrete company and the group’s aggregate supplies. When Fulton Hogan bought Gibbons’ quarrying and crushing operations in 1997, Bruce had a new employer for the first time in 34 years.  

“Over the years I’ve seen a lot of technical changes, all for the better,” he says.

“Nowadays, with the equipment and plant available, you can produce anything to any spec or price.

“The first crushing plant I had was a 16 x 9 Kue-Ken, a 2ft Jaques cone, and a Paintin & Nottingham 12 x 3 screen with feed bin and elevator. We were doing 70-100 cubic metres a day. Today, in many of the operations in the industry, if you’re not getting 1200 tonnes or better a day you ask why.”

Bruce and his wife Julie, who have three sons, live on a lifestyle block in Richmond. He’s 64 but has no thoughts of giving up work or his work for the industry, even though he has plenty of outside interests – Rotary, wood-chopping, seven grandchildren, and buying and selling livestock.

Like all quarrying leaders Bruce is concerned about the industry’s long-standing problems – the need to educate politicians, local authorities and the public that quarrying is vital in the provision of the country’s infrastructure, that many quarrying companies have invested large amounts of money not for 5-10 years but for 50 years and more and must be protected, that quarries need to be safeguarded from being built around then having their activities restricted; and, conversely, the need for quarries to work at communicating and getting on with their neighbours, and keeping their local authority informed of the aggregate resources available within the community.

“On the one hand you have councils desperate for transport infrastructure and on the other hand you have some councils putting up restrictions and making it hard to obtain quality rawfeed,” Bruce says.

“All regions need to review their district plans and know where their roading materials will be coming from for the next 100 years. Industry and councils need to work together more closely.”

Despite the foregoing problems, Bruce would not have devoted his life to any other line of work.

“Two of the best things in our industry are the people we work with and that aggregates remains one of the few industries which is largely protected from import competition and weak export markets,” he says.

“I only wish I were 20 years younger and coming into the industry with the knowledge I have now. For the younger ones entering our industry, the world’s their oyster.”

He adds that everyone must have a vision or a dream. “And my dream was to become a manager, building screening plants and manufacturing and processing products. I believe I’ve achieved what I wanted in the position I’m in and [because of] what Fulton Hogan has done for me.

“Now it’s up to me to share my knowledge with and support the younger ones coming through the industry.”