About Nick Terry
A certified fencer who now spends his time on the part of the job that happens before the posts go in, and on the part that happens when something has gone wrong. There is no team of consultants here. That is deliberate, and it is the whole proposition.
I came to this from the building end, not the advising end
I learned fencing on the job, the way nearly everybody in this trade does, and I have spent my working life building the things that consultants elsewhere only draw. Post and wire, netting, deer, security, urban boundaries, retaining, yards and the awkward country in between. Not one project of it was theoretical.
That matters more than it sounds. A great deal of fencing advice in New Zealand is given by people who have never had to make a plan work on a wet Tuesday in ground that is not what the drawing said it was. When I specify an assembly I know what it takes to build it, what it costs to build it properly, and what the shortcut looks like when someone decides not to.
Along the way I became an FCANZ Certified Fencer - the Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand's practical assessment of a fencer against a published standard, which has to be maintained rather than earned once. It is the credential that sits behind everything on this site.
I also served three years on the FCANZ executive committee, 2022-2025. That is the governance side of the trade rather than the working side of it: the standards, the direction and the arguments that sit behind what everybody else takes as given. It is a useful thing to have done before being asked for an opinion nobody on either side of a job can dismiss.
I have not stopped building fences. That is what makes the advice worth anything: I am describing a standard I still have to go out and meet.
Country where the ground makes more of the decisions than the plan does. Most of what is worth knowing in this trade was learned somewhere like it.
People kept ringing for an answer rather than for a crew
It built up over years. What should I put in here? Is this quote reasonable? Why does this line keep letting stock through? Who is right in this argument with my neighbour? I would spend half an hour on the phone with somebody I was never going to invoice, and it was often the most useful half hour either of us had that week.
Two things eventually made a separate business the right answer. The first is that the advice is worth paying for and worth doing properly - a considered specification or a written assessment is a different thing from a favour on the phone, and it deserves the time it takes.
The second is the more important one. Advice given by the person who wants to build the fence is compromised whether they mean it to be or not. Selling it separately is the only arrangement in which the advice can be trusted, and it is why this is a company of its own with its own name rather than a service line on a contractor's website.
So the work now runs from specification and cost planning through tendering, project management and inspection, and on into the things people only need when it has already gone wrong: condition surveys, expert reports and disputes.
A shared boundary with services running under it. Two owners, one fence, and usually two versions of what was agreed.
Paid for the advice, not for the work that follows
I am a certified fencer and I also own a fencing contracting business. That is stated up front rather than buried, because it is the first thing anybody sensible wants to know about an independent adviser.
The rule is simple and it does not bend. If I am advising you, my contracting company is not tendering for your job. You can have my advice or you can have my crew, and you cannot have both on the same project, because the moment you could the advice stops being worth anything. If you would rather have the fence built than the question answered, I will say so and point you elsewhere.
It works the same way in a dispute. I give the same finding whichever party is paying for the assessment, and if your position is the weaker one you will hear that from me first.
The contracting business is Custom Fencing Ltd, which is where the experience behind all of this comes from - and it is disclosed here so that you can check it rather than discover it.
FCANZ Certified Fencer. The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand assesses fencers against a practical standard that has to be maintained rather than earned once. The reason it matters here: the advice comes from somebody who still has to go out and build to the standard he is describing.
What I have spent my time on
Consulting is only useful if it comes from having actually built the thing. This is the experience the advice draws on, and it is why the service list covers ports and paddocks rather than one or the other.
Security and perimeter fencing
Keeping people out, keeping people in and keeping pests out - for schools, commercial yards, public sites and secure facilities, where what was specified and what was built both have to be demonstrable afterwards.
Urban, residential and boundary work
Boundary fences across subdivisions and infill sites, panel and colour-steel systems, and the constraints town work brings with it: access, services, neighbours, consent and a finish that has to look right from the footpath.
Retaining, piling and ground works
Timber pole and sleeper retaining, house piles and the places where fencing and retaining meet - which is where responsibility, cost and consent all get blurred, and where a specification earns its keep.
Rural and stock fencing
Eight wire, netting, deer, electric and horse fencing on flat country and on faces that argue with you. Long boundary lines, paddock subdivision, laneways, and the gateways and crossings that decide whether a block is workable.
Stockyards and handling facilities
Timber and steel yards, drafting races, forcing pens and loading ramps. Built once and used every week for thirty years, which is why the layout is worth arguing about before anything goes in the ground.
Difficult ground
Rock, wet ground, steep faces and river margins. This is where prices come apart and where experience is worth the most, because the plan drawn at the table rarely survives the first hundred metres.
One person, and you get that person
You deal with me from the first phone call to the last report. Nothing is handed to a junior, nothing is written by somebody you have not met, and there is no account manager between you and the person doing the assessment.
The trade-off is honest: I cannot be in four places at once, so a large programme is planned around when I can actually be there. What you get in exchange is that every opinion on the file is the same person's opinion, and that person put their own boots on the ground to form it.
- A scope and a fixed price agreed before any work starts, never after
- A straight answer if you do not need me, including when that costs me the job
- Findings in writing, with photographs and reasoning, in language a non-fencer follows
- The same conclusion regardless of which party is paying for it
Rock. The single item most often missed at pricing stage, and the fastest way to turn a fixed price into an argument about variations.
Based in East Otago, working across New Zealand
I am at Waikouaiti, twenty-odd minutes north of Dunedin on the coast. That is where the office is and where the postal address goes, and it is the only sense in which this is an Otago business.
Site work is national. A consultancy travels differently from a fencing crew - there is no gear to move and no team to house, so a condition survey in Northland or an inspection programme in the Waikato is a matter of scheduling rather than of geography. Travel is quoted openly as part of the job so you can see exactly what it is costing you.
Desk work has no geography at all. Reviewing a set of tenders, checking a specification, preparing a cost plan or giving an opinion on photographs and a contract can start the day you send the file, wherever in the country you are.
If a job is small and a long way away, I will say so and tell you whether the travel is worth it. Sometimes the answer is that a phone call and some photographs will get you ninety per cent of the way for none of the cost.
A development platform where the barrier fence was designed as part of the earthworks rather than added at the end of them.
Twelve areas of work
Some of it is an hour on the phone. Some of it is a tender package, a condition survey across a portfolio, or an expert report for a dispute. Take whichever parts you need.
Tell me what you are trying to work out
Most people get in touch because they have a decision to make and nobody independent to check it with - a tender that does not add up, a fence line that keeps failing, a dispute that has stopped moving, or a property they are about to buy. Describe the situation and I will tell you honestly whether it needs me, and what it would take.
021 614 100- nick@customfenceconsulting.co.nz
- 130 Edinburgh Street, Waikouaiti 9510, Otago
- Monday to Friday, 7am - 5.30pm
Based at Waikouaiti in East Otago and working throughout New Zealand. Site work anywhere in the country; desk work - a tender review, a specification, an opinion on a set of photographs - can start the day you send it.