Training & Technical Support
Technical support for the people specifying, buying and building the fence.
Why people bring this to somebody outside
This is support for contractors and for the people who engage them, rather than a course anybody sits. Most of it is short and specific: a toolbox talk on a particular assembly, an hour on site when a crew hits something they have not seen before, or a session with a client's project team on how to read a fencing specification and tell whether they are getting it.
For contracting businesses, mentoring is the useful version. Someone outside the business to work through a method, a standard or a difficult job with, and to help crews toward formal certification if that is where they are heading.
For clients, the value is usually in knowing enough to ask the right question. An organisation that understands why the specification says what it says buys better fencing from that point on, permanently, and stops needing me for the routine jobs.
Not every post goes in from a tractor seat. Ground like this is where technique stops being theoretical.
What this covers
Toolbox talks and onsite technical guidance
Short, specific sessions on the job, about the work in front of the crew that day.
Contractor mentoring
An outside sounding board for a fencing business on method, standards and difficult work.
Specification and product training
What a specification is asking for and why, for the people who have to price or build it.
Client education
Enough understanding in-house to brief a job properly and tell whether it was delivered.
Independent technical workshops
Sessions run for a group, with no product to sell at the end of them.
Who this is for
- Fencing contractors wanting an independent technical sounding board
- Project teams who buy fencing but have no fencing background
- Rural professionals and consultants who need to advise on it competently
- Industry groups wanting a session run by someone with nothing to sell
What you get
- A session run on site or at your premises
- Notes or a short guide the attendees keep
- Ongoing availability for the questions that come up afterwards
Costed and agreed before I start, never after. A phone call about a straightforward question is usually free.
Often taken together with
Independent Fencing Advice
A straight answer from somebody who is not quoting the work.
Read more →Quality Assurance & Inspections
Checking the fence against the specification while it can still be put right.
Read more →Consulting for Councils & Large Organisations
Standards, documentation and peer review for organisations that buy fencing repeatedly rather than once.
Read more →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.
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.