How A&K Plumbing and Drainage grew from one ute to a 25-strong team by never turning down a job.
From plumbing and drainage to electrical and civil, Andrew Nickson has built A&K around one simple philosophy: don't turn away a good opportunity.
For Andrew Nickson, diversification, the right people and the right equipment have turned every new challenge into another opportunity to expand.
Andrew Nickson has been in the plumbing industry since he was just a spring chicken. At 16, he started his long career in the industry, working throughout the Wellington and Wairarapa regions during his training. After earning his qualifications, he started out on his own to deliver high-quality service and quality in the area he grew up in.
A&K Plumbing and Drainage Ltd was established in 2019 and has grown from just Andrew, a one-person band working out of a ute, to a team of around 25. They are continually expanding their services to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers.
Although he is based in his idyllic hometown of Greytown, Wairarapa, he also has staff based in Upper Hutt, servicing the Hutt Valley and Wellington, and extending to the Kapiti Coast and Porirua, including all the rural areas in between.
As part of their work with transportable building companies, they also have staff on the road who have travelled as far as Napier in the North Island and Picton in the South Island.
From the beginning, Andrew had an eye for business growth. One of the barriers he found when working on plumbing jobs was the scheduling restrictions due to needing to wait on electric companies to complete their work in order to keep jobs moving. The solution? Bring it all in-house, of course. This saved the clients from the headaches of juggling contractors, making it a streamlined, win-win process.
Diversification is the name of their game, and they have now further increased their offering with the addition of heat pump installs and home fire sprinkler systems. Andrew has also recently launched a civil company, Apex Civil and Earthworks Ltd, bringing in a business partner to help with his ever-growing workload. This means undertaking start-to-finish subdivisions, which include a lot of work, driveways, roading, and site clearing, sometimes partnering with sister company, A & K Traffic Solutions, owned and operated by Andrew's wife, Kaila.
With so many trades operating under one roof, it is no wonder that synergy is the word that comes to mind for the company.
Andrew is strongly invested in the local community, truly believing that no job is too small. Although his staff can fluctuate, he prides his company on still having a small-town feel.
Attach2 caught up with Andrew on site at the team's first major subdivision to learn more about his journey.
“I'm the director, lead plumber, gas fitter and drain layer,” he tells us. “After expanding with the purchase of a local electrical company about three years ago, we've now grown the team to most recently 25 staff with the potential to keep expanding as the workflow increases in our local area.”
The company now has many strings to its bow, covering residential, commercial, and civil projects from leaky tap washers and dodgy switchgear and light switches through to new builds and renovations. They also engage in a large amount of rural work, utilising their expertise in areas such as septic systems and full potable water systems.
Their latest foray into civil is on show today on site, where they are working on a large site-clearing job.
Andrew is clearly a yes-man, and the growth of his company stems from that. By not wanting to turn anyone away, he simply diversifies and brings in who he needs to support the ever-growing work with a strong focus on quality as well as training.
Growing pains, with his mindset, instead become an opportunity.
“We're the kind of company that doesn't like to turn away a job. I look for specialised people to bring into the company and join the teams to make sure that we're serving the broad range of things we offer to the best of our ability. As I've brought on tradespeople, I've also wanted to bring in apprentices so those tradesmen can help train the next generation. Currently, about half of our staff are apprentices at varying levels of their apprenticeship,” he explains.
It is clear how much pride he has in his apprentices. When asked about notable achievements, he tells us that one of their apprentices won the Regional Young Plumber of the Year Competition and has now been sent forward to compete at the national competition up in Hamilton.
No day is the same for the team at A&K Plumbing and Electrical. They are currently working on a medical centre in the plumbing and electrical space, as well as some rural civil work, excavation and site clearing.
“Completely different skill sets are required for these kinds of projects, as well as our residential maintenance for our local customers,” Andrew says.
Resilience in the Face of Adversity
Building up a range of skill sets under one roof also helps ease some of the challenges the industry faces.
With some jobs having become heavily dependent on price, the team prioritise quality over quantity, meaning they may miss out on some larger projects. Andrew notes that retirement villages appear to be an area of growth nationally, driven by an aging population. Working on the plumbing and drainage for these has also meant that, if they are doing subdivision or residential work in winter when it is wet, they can send their teams somewhere dry and controlled.
Some other challenges that are passed on to customers also include price increases in materials, as well as operating costs, especially in the civil sector, where larger machinery is used. This makes it out of reach for some of their smaller customers, but the team rely on their key client partnerships to try and overcome this.
“The mum and dad subdivisions, the one house getting turned into two lots, that's really put some pressure on them,” Andrew explains.
“As a company, we're aiming to try and ease that as best we can through our partnerships with Plumbing World and Hireways and Corries Electrical. Through our suppliers, we try to get the best pricing we can to then pass on to our customers.”
It is hard to imagine now, but the site the team are on today started as a heavily wooded lot in between residential housing.
Bringing in specialist subcontractors for the tree felling (they can't do everything), their in-house team then took over. They cleared the site, broke down the trees, and removed them as firewood for repurposing. A lot of the slash is being loaded out by the Kobelco SK210 which we can see behind us, using their smaller Kubota U35-4 to work closely around the buildings.
Starting with just the site clearing, the team have clearly made a good impression with the client by having now been asked to stay for a while to clear fences and stumps, as well as provide pricing for the underground services through their plumbing, electrical, and drainage teams. It really does mitigate headaches for the clients when there is one team running the whole operation.
“When we leave, we want to be handing this over as a full subdivision ready to sell to potential home builders,” Andrew tells us.
As you can imagine, working on excavation and clearing sites in residential and urban areas can bring up some challenges, particularly in Wellington, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa, where houses are built more densely.
Bringing in a 20t excavator can be tricky, but Andrew is a man with a plan.
“Working through it with a strong plan from the start and a good team of guys has meant that we're able to get in and complete the job safely, on time and provide a really good result for our customer. The winter weather can create issues when sites like this start to get wet, so having a good plan of how we're going to get into an area, clear an area, and move out of the area means we can work around the weather.”
Just a Man and His Machines
Working across such a range of industries, the company knows its equipment.
In-house, they have the 1.5-ton Kubota U17-5 and the 3.5-ton Kubota U35-4 supplied by Norwood this year, as the workflow has increased, and both are fitted out with new Attach2 Performance Packages including Couplers and full bucket packages. They also have a selection of trucks to support those machines. With the electrical and plumbing arm of the company, they of course have a fleet of utes and vans.
“We currently have nine vehicles on the road in our plumbing and electrical side: three trucks and the two excavators. So, a reasonable sized fleet. But we've got the 25 staff, so needing to get those out to the customers is a challenge all in itself,” he tells us.
“The U17 is the first 1.7 ton machine we've bought new. Before that, we had an 800kg Kubota machine, which was an excellent machine, but we found that the new 1.7 ton -5 machine from Kubota, with the retractable tracks and the small footprint, meant we can get in and access most of the jobs we need to with the added power over the 800kg machine. Our 3.5-ton machine was to replace our original 2.8-ton machine, which is also specc'ed out with Attach2 gear.”
“With the 2.8 ton Kobelco SK28, it was the first machine I bought when I started out on my own, and it just hour-metered out at about 3000 hours. So, we've upgraded to the 3.5 with the move into more civil and drainage work, and we needed a slightly bigger machine for that.”
Being a big fan of streamlined processes, Andrew knows how important the relationship between an excavator and attachments is. When it comes to their machine and attachment selection for the projects that the team do, they look at the requirements on a job-to-job basis.
“The 1.7 ton machine, which is our newest purchase, we haven't had a machine in that class before, so we've gone for Attach2 with a Sure-Grip Coupler on that one with the trenching bucket, a dig bucket, a clean-up bucket, and we intend to grow as we require extra attachments. With our 3.5-ton machine, that was an upgrade from our 2.8-ton machine. We were able to re-use the buckets that we'd collected for that machine,” he tells us.
“The great thing about Attach2, running the same hitch from a 2.8 up to a 3.5, has meant we could put the money into putting a Heli-Tilt coupler on our 3.5 and then use our Multi-Grab bucket, rippers and clay spades on the new one, and then we bought a basic wide bucket package that has a dig bucket and trench bucket for that machine as well.”
“Our Heli-Tilt coupler and our Grab-Bucket work really well in a clearing situation like this because we're able to break down trees from the top, bring them down safely and in a controlled manner, and then use the same grab bucket to tidy up. With the hire gear we've got on site here, the 20-ton, having the grab bucket on it, has meant we can pick up trees as full trees and move them to a safe area where we can break them down with the ground crew using chainsaws.”
“Attach2's attachments are good for having such a variety and providing us the flexibility to get in and tackle all the different tasks. It has meant that we've got reliable, well-built attachments and hitches, so we're not having downtime or failures, which means we can get in, get a job done, and get out. Their range of attachments is huge, so if we need to get in and break up hard ground, we have options there for rippers, clay buckets, stuff like that, that we've got in storage at the yard, so we can grab them, get out, get in, get the job done. Customer's happy, we're happy, clean up the attachments, they're ready for the next job.”
“We've upgraded our machines as we've gone along and decided to stay with Attach2 just due to their broad range of attachments and the quality we're finding with them. Being able to put in a hard day's work and have the attachments stand up to it has really meant that our productivity stays high and we can deliver a good result to our customer in a timely fashion.”
Of particular use today, Andrew is a fan of the dig and trench buckets, ensuring easy, tight access to sites.
“Having them designed in such a way that you can scrape against the face of a deep hole with a smaller machine means that we can put a 1.7 tonne in to dig a small soak pit in a residential property. And we know that we're going to get good depth out of that machine. That's going to help us to get stuff done quickly and means we don't have to bring in a larger machine,” he explains.
So what's on the horizon for the team that does (almost) everything?
With the civil side of the business expanding, they are looking to start getting the word out through their new brand and name Apex Civil and Earthworks, a joint venture between Andrew and his business partner Troy. While the market allows, they will lean into that, then come in with their plumbers and electricians to support the subdivision works. They will also continue their partnership with Attach2 to spec stuff right up to the 20 plus tonnage, with options readily available as they continue to grow. As Andrew puts it: “You know, boys love their toys, we always want to get a bigger digger.”
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