Shane Smart of Civtec says hard work and clever strategies are two reasons his company has grown from a two-person, ute-and-trailer business to a nationally recognised civil provisioning company with dozens of skilled employees.

Shane is co-owner and co-director of Civtec, as well as filling the role of Operations Manager.  With 14 years of industry experience behind him, Shane started Civtec a little more than three years ago after seeing a gap in the market for a small contractor.

“When I first started, there were two of us with a ute and a trailer doing one job a day,” says Shane.  “Things went really well and we were responding to more and more demand.  Now we’ve grown to a staff of more than 50 and have diversified into other work such as water, gas and power.”

Civtec has been supplying end to end provisioning services for the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) rollout, enabling fibre access to residential and commercial properties with services such as drilling, trenching, thrusting, fibre blowing, internal installation, reinstatement and network faults.

Shane says part of Civtec’s success is due to recognising new requirements in the market and expanding to meet those requirements.

“The last two or two-and-a-half years has been very much installation of fibre.  Now we’re driving expansion into other civil and utility areas.”

Civtec currently has civil contracts which include work for the Waikato Expressway (Longswamp and Hamilton Bypass), Solid Energy mine and Matamata Piako District Council.

“We’re spreading our work around,” says Shane, “but still very much in the underground, directional drilling, underground thrusting side of things.”

The growth of Civtec saw it win the Rising Star ‘One to Watch’ category at the Deloitte Fast 50 Business awards in September last year.

“It’s something that’s grown organically,” says Shane, “with a bit of hard work.  Well, a lot of hard work.  We’re improving our systems and our brand is growing.  We’re getting recognised around town as having a good name.”

Shane says Civtec is also getting recognition on social media platforms, since embarking in a robust social media marketing strategy.

“We’re creating a fresh, vibrant company that’s out there on Facebook and on You Tube.  We may not even get direct revenue out of it but the important thing is that people see it and think, ‘Civtec – we’ve seen them, they’re out there.’”