Evans Building Group: From the Ground Up, Up and Away

Evans Building Group: From the Ground Up, Up & Away

Dan Evans is a builder and the Director at Evans Building Group. After completing his apprenticeship in Torquay and working in both residential and commercial construction for over a decade, Dan decided to take the plunge and work for himself. The result? A company that builds multi-million-dollar custom projects.

“I did my apprenticeship with a high-end builder in Torquay, and I suppose that’s where the passion started for the higher end home market,” Dan said. “I was subbing around to different builders as a qualified Carpenter. I did that for probably 10 years and landed a job with a commercial company taking on a site manager role there and a bit of project management.”

Dan said that working on bigger scale builds and managing of 20-30 blokes at a time, gave him an advantage when starting his own business.

Would you say that the combination of experience on the tools and management prepared you for running your own business?

100%. I don’t know how builders can do what they do without being in the trade originally. I’m hands on with it all and understand the process because I’ve done it. Managing was great. I learned a lot about systems and safety, and I’ve implemented things like safety management plans, coordination plans, site registers and site inductions into the company but on a smaller scale. I have an OH&S representative who works for us part time. He set it up and it’s seamless now.

What made you want to start Evans Building Group?

I never wanted to work for someone for the rest of my life. So, I took a jump. We started in mid-2020, which was a bit of a weird time with the world at that stage, but everyone was busy, so it was quite a good time for me to pick up little jobs. It was me and one other guy just flat out on the tools. We started the hard way with no money, just working a lot. But I’ve slowly built it up and the jobs got bigger and bigger. Now we’re doing this pretty impressive build in Werribee.

Were there any challenges when it came to getting a DBU license (Domestic Builder Unlimited) for the Werribee build?

Probably the biggest thing, and which everyone has to fight with, is the insurance side of it. When you first start out, you only get very limited amount of money to build with insurance-wise each year. That really governs how much you can take on. At the start I might have been given $1,000,000 limit per year I could build with. I had to just work within that and then just slightly grew with a bit of experience and an asset behind it. Now we have a fair bit we can work with so we could take on this build in Werribee.

With the current state of the industry and increasing costs across the board, have you changed the way you do business?

We decided to use a cost-plus arrangement with our last job. It’s very open book and transparent. There’s more admin but the clients are getting real life figures. What we found with a fixed price contract within the last few years, is it’s hurt a lot of people because of the price rises. Now people are overcompensating and putting a lot of contingencies into their prices as you would know. I suppose it is a little bit more of a risk for the client because they don’t have an end figure. However, I still do price it before we start. We use that price as an estimate, and we can refer to it as we go.

Are clients happy to use this type of contract?

Some people don’t want to entertain it. They haven’t got the time. They just want to sign a builder up, build a house and move in, which is fine. But I was finding the last few jobs that were priced were so expensive, it even shocked me. We’re here trying to help the client build this home without dropping our margins to 1%.

What part of the building costs have increased the most?

Every trade might be an extra 10-15 grand on their package and there might be 20 trades in a job. It’s incredible how that adds up. And then some materials like plaster, insulation and concrete – some big packages have gone up 15-20%. That’s big dollars on a bigger scale job.

What sort of what advice would you give a qualified chippy who’s looking to start out their own company?

Take the risk. Everyone’s so nervous about if they’re going to get work. I started my first project as Evans Building Group while I was still finishing off a job for a commercial company, so it overlapped a bit to take the pressure off financially. But you’ve got to jump in and have a go. I feel being a Carpenter is the best way because you can be on the tools. You’re relying less on trades because you can be there, full-time doing the carpentry and managing all the other trades. You’ve got to be very hands on at the start.

Do you have advice when dealing with trades as a builder?

Surround yourself with good trades. I find relationships and loyalties are massive and we’re pretty big on that with clients, other trades, and suppliers like Bowens. Be upfront. If you’ve got no money, tell them. If you’ve got other trades quoting a job and you give it to someone else, ring the other guy and tell him, “I’m sorry, we went with another company.”

When asked if Evans Building Group will evolve in the next five years, Dan was very clear. “I feel that the model I’ve got at the minute is perfect. I’ve got good labour, I’m still on site quite a bit and I’m really happy with how that’s structured,” he says. “We’re at that level where people know about us to a degree and come to us. I’ve never advertised. I haven’t really got a website. It’s been word of mouth.”