Ben Donaghy came up through roofing, carpentry, concreting, rigging and commercial site management before opening Stroud Homes Brisbane North. He told Az what that path taught him about trades, transparency and tricky blocks.
Ask Ben Donaghy what makes a good builder and he does not talk about himself.
He talks about the people around him.
“A builder is a connector of people,” he told Az on The Good Builder Podcast. “We find people in the industry that are good at what they do. We bring them together, we make them a team.”
It is a view shaped by a career that has touched almost every layer of construction. Ben now runs Stroud Homes Brisbane North with his wife, Pip. Before that, he worked his way from a roofing job at seventeen to running four commercial projects at once.
A career built on taking the jobs nobody else wanted
Ben left school at seventeen and started in roofing. A year or two on steep, shiny roofs in the sun convinced him he wanted to build houses instead, so he moved into a carpentry apprenticeship.
Mine site work in Chinchilla, formwork and concreting followed, then stints in Gladstone and Darwin. By the time he came home, he held qualifications as a carpenter, concreter, roofer and rigger.
His first supervising role came soon after, on a large structural steel job in Toowoomba. He had been a qualified rigger for about six months.
From the start, his approach to programming was to lean on the trades. “You know your job better than me, lads. How long is it going to take you to do it?” he would ask. If the answer was seven days, the next question was why it could not be done in five.
He then spent five years with a Brisbane based commercial builder, working across Queensland and down to Melbourne and Sydney.
“I wanted to get a name for myself,” he said. “And the only way to get a name for yourself was to do the jobs people don’t want to do.”
That led to a run of service station builds, including four in Townsville that he managed at the same time through the peak of COVID. It was there he started his first construction company.
Commercial work lost its appeal because the risk sat above him
After moving to Brisbane, Ben’s company took on commercial fit out work: ceilings, linings and partitions on high rise projects. Over time, he fell out of love with it.
“It’s just cold. It’s emotionless. It’s return on investment driven,” he said.
The bigger issue was control. As a subcontractor on large contracts, his business was exposed to how well the builder above him ran its own systems.
“I didn’t like just being a contractor at the mercy of a builder, hoping that they’re following their policies and their procedures right,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m following mine to a T.”
Big contract values also concentrate risk. With only so many commercial jobs to go around, a subcontractor is often forced to put most of its eggs in one basket.
A Stroud Homes advertisement came up while he was scrolling Facebook. He listened to podcasts featuring Stroud Homes founder James Stroud, talked it through with Pip, and the pair called the franchise team.
Black and white pricing was the deciding factor
For Ben, the pricing model mattered as much as the brand. Stroud Homes says its contracts include site costs and council fees in the price.
He contrasted that with contracts that rely heavily on provisional sums, where key costs stay open after the client signs.
“You’ve got mums and dads that could be a nurse,” he said. “They might be too embarrassed to ask what a PS means on their contract, so they just sign.”
What is a provisional sum?
A provisional sum (often shortened to PS) is an allowance in a building contract for work, or for supplying and installing items, where the builder cannot fix the cost when the contract is signed.
Once the work is done, the allowance is adjusted to the actual cost, so the final contract price can go up or down. Rules on how provisional sums are disclosed and adjusted vary between states and territories.
He was candid that this creates extra work in the sales process. When clients have heard the same promises before, transparency has to be proven before it can be sold.
“We’re trying to sell transparency and we’ve got to make you believe in that before we can sell it,” he said.
He also draws a sharp line between commercial and residential clients. A developer can absorb a site cost change as part of doing business. A family often cannot. That is why, he said, the due diligence happens before the contract price is set, so the phone call about extra costs never needs to be made.
Tricky blocks are where commercial experience pays off
Stroud Homes Brisbane North is targeting sloping blocks, stepped sites and knockdown rebuilds. These are jobs some builders steer away from.
Ben sees them differently. After commercial jobs with dozens of different levels, a house with three changes in finished floor level is a matter of getting the laser out.
“If you’ve got that trust, that tricky build is not tricky, is it?” he said. “It’s an opportunity to help someone get the house they need.”
Current work includes two knockdown rebuilds and a large custom home at Wights Mountain on a site with around 20 metres of fall, by his estimate. His first job under the Stroud name was a granny flat.
A good builder still starts on site, not on a screen
Ben is firm that the first meeting happens on the block.
“Google Earth isn’t telling me the lay of the land,” he said. “It’s not telling me how many cars are driving up that street. It’s not telling me the overhead power’s there.”
He wants to see where the afternoon sun falls, where trucks will need to reverse and how the street behaves through the day. The same thinking applies to design. He wants to know how a family lives before anything is drawn.
“If a builder’s talking to you and they don’t want to know how you use your house, how the family lives, why you’ve outgrown your previous house and what you need from your new one, it’s not the right person,” he said.
“That tricky build is not tricky, is it? It’s an opportunity to help someone get the house they need.”
Trades stay when they are treated as partners
With commercial work competing hard for trades, Ben says his business is not feeling the squeeze. His core trades have been with him for seven to ten years, and they all live locally.
“They’re not my trades, they’re my friends,” he said.
That loyalty runs both ways. When he was starting the franchise, his carpenter helped with takeoffs and joined him on roofing jobs to keep cash flowing.
On site, trades flag each other’s misses rather than covering them. Ben gave the example of a forgotten power point: the plasterer holds off on that sheet until the electrician comes back to fix it.
It is an approach to managing subcontractors that leans on loyalty more than leverage. Ben contrasted it with pushing trades on a square metre rate for speed and margin. “That’s not how you make money,” he said. “It only lasts for so long.”
Morning discipline creates room to pivot
Ben is serious about training, and he links the habit to how he runs jobs. A structured start to the day gives him a clear head when the program falls over.
“If I get the discipline in the morning where I’m so structured, it allows me to pivot,” he said, describing a day with ten builds running and heavy rain overnight.
On those days, he pulls the trades together, ideas get thrown around, and crews shift to a house that is ready for fix.
The franchise network is the value he rates highest
Ask him about the franchise and he points to the other builders.
“If I only got one thing out of this franchise and it was the network of other builders building in other regions … that alone’s worth its weight,” he said.
Because each franchisee works in their own territory, he said, nobody has a reason to hold back advice.
Success in five years is measured by reputation, not volume
Ben does not frame success as a number. Asked where he wants the business in five years, he described what he hopes suppliers and trades would say about him and Pip.
“They’re good people. They’ve supported local, they’ve stayed true to their word … they’ve delivered on homes that people actually need and wanted to live in,” he said.
He also describes the work as a privilege. Clients are trusting a builder with one of the biggest financial decisions they will make, and he treats that trust as something to earn.
The Good Builder Take
Much of the industry conversation right now is about technology that cuts site visits and speeds up communication. Those tools have their place.
But Ben’s story is a reminder that the hard parts of residential building still happen in person: reading a block, earning the trust of a wary client, and keeping trades loyal through a tight market.
Time across several trades is not a nice extra. It is what lets a builder ask why a job takes seven days, and know whether the answer is fair.
Experience counts most when it is spent on people
Ben Donaghy’s story is not a story about scale. It is about where experience gets spent.
Years across trades and commercial sites mean he can read a program, question an inflated timeframe and take on a difficult block. But the thread he keeps returning to is people: trades who stay, clients who get a straight price, and a network of builders who answer the phone.
For anyone thinking about what really protects a residential building business when trades are tight and clients are wary, that is worth sitting with.
Listen to the full conversation with Ben Donaghy on The Good Builder Podcast.
Frequently asked questions
Stroud Homes Brisbane North is run by husband and wife Ben and Pip Donaghy, who joined the Stroud Homes franchise network after Ben spent years in roofing, carpentry, concreting, rigging and commercial site management.
Ben Donaghy describes a good builder as a connector of people. In his view, the builder finds trades, designers, salespeople and suppliers who are good at what they do, brings them together as a team and organises them to deliver a home for the client.
A provisional sum is an allowance in a building contract for work or items whose cost cannot be fixed when the contract is signed. The amount is later adjusted to the actual cost, so the final contract price can move. Disclosure and adjustment rules vary by state and territory.
Ben Donaghy says the business is targeting sloping blocks, stepped sites and knockdown rebuilds in Brisbane North, alongside custom designed homes and smaller projects such as granny flats.
For Ben Donaghy, the main value is access to other builders in other regions. Because each franchisee works in their own territory, he says they can share advice openly without competing for the same clients.
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Last updated: 6 October 2026
General Information Only: This article is general information only. It is based on a podcast interview and reflects the views of the guest. It is not legal, financial or professional advice and should not be relied on as such. Readers should seek independent professional advice about their own circumstances.
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