Trades, construction and manufacturing
Your business can't keep running on what's in your head.
A trade or building business that started with one person and a ute now runs crews, subcontractors and a pipeline of work, and the HR foundations never caught up. Award and classification questions get harder as the team grows and the trades mix widens.
We're the HR partner for trades, construction and manufacturing businesses on the Sunshine Coast and across Queensland. Recruitment, HR advisory, leadership and coaching, for the point where a growing crew needs more than a handshake and a ute.
What we hear from trades and construction businesses
Award classifications get harder as the trades mix widens.
Apprentices, tradespeople, subcontractors and office staff can all sit on different awards and rates. Get a classification wrong and the exposure is backdated, not forward-looking.
Contractor or employee. Get it wrong and it's expensive.
Sham contracting penalties are real and increasingly enforced. The line between a genuine subcontractor and a disguised employee isn't always where people assume it is.
Your best tradie isn't automatically your best supervisor.
Promoting on technical skill alone leaves new leaders managing people with no training in how to do it. The tools that build well and the tools that lead well aren't the same tools.
A safety incident needs a process, not a scramble.
When something goes wrong on site, how you respond in the first 48 hours matters as much as what happened. Winging it isn't a strategy.
The business outgrew what was running on memory.
Position descriptions that don't match the job. A handbook written for five people, not fifty. Systems that lived in one person's head and now need to live somewhere everyone can find them.
Your workforce is spread across sites, not sitting in an office.
Crews on different job sites, subcontractors coming and going, apprentices needing supervision. Culture and compliance are harder to see when nobody's in the same room.
If two or three of those landed, you're in the right place.
How we help
Recruitment
Tradespeople, supervisors, project managers and leadership roles. One flat fee per placement, not a percentage of salary, and advertising at cost. We screen for reliability and fit as hard as we screen for the ticket.
HR advisory
Award and classification advice across a mixed trades workforce, contracts, policies and handbooks, performance and conduct matters, independent investigations, and the everyday questions you'd rather ask someone than guess at. Available as an ongoing partnership or a one-off piece of work.
Leadership & Coaching
Tradespeople promoted into supervisor or manager roles usually get the title before they get the skills. We build that capability, so growth doesn't outpace the people running it.
Most businesses come to us for one of the three and end up using all three. You don't need to work out which one you need before you call.
Qspec: building the leadership team to scale what he built
Building and modification business. Sunshine Coast and across South East Queensland. Working with their leadership team since August 2024.
"Bonnie brings a great mix of professionalism and genuine care, creating a supportive environment where both individuals and teams can thrive. Her insights have helped us strengthen our leadership team and improve our internal culture."
— Ryan Quade, Managing Director, Qspec
We started with the vision, not the org chart.
A vision and strategy day set the direction: six guiding principles and four strategic objectives, agreed by the leadership team themselves, not handed down.
Then we built the leadership underneath it.
A five part leadership program for eight leaders, followed by ongoing one on one coaching. An organisation design naming an executive leadership team and a middle management layer beneath it. Executive search for an Operations Manager and a General Manager, run on scorecards and psychometrics.
Then we made it repeatable.
Role clarity across the team: position descriptions, new contracts and an award classification review. A hiring process the team now owns: interview guides, scorecards and reference checks.
That's the shape of it. Role clarity documented at every level, a leadership layer that didn't exist before, and an owner working on the business instead of just in it.
Read the full case studyWho else we work with in trades, construction and manufacturing
A snapshot of the businesses across the Sunshine Coast and Queensland who trust us with their people.
How this usually starts
Something holding the job up
An award or contractor question, a conduct or safety issue, a supervisor who needs support, or a role you cannot keep vacant. We’ll help resolve the immediate problem without slowing the work.
Structure for the next stage
Often becomes ongoing supportClear roles, practical policies, stronger supervisors and ongoing recruitment and HR advice, so the business is not relying on the owner to hold everything together.
Ready to talk about your team?
Either way, the first conversation is free and we'll tell you if we're not the right fit.
Let’s talk about your business