If there is one pressure point almost every builder talks about in 2025, it is people.
Not just finding people.
Finding the right people.
Keeping them.
And building systems so the whole thing does not fall over the moment more work comes in.
On The Good Builder podcast, Increase Construction founder Drew lifted the lid on how his team helps builders solve that problem. What started as a marketing and sales agency has evolved into a model that touches recruitment, procurement, operations, and technology for builders across Australia.
At its heart is a simple idea: most builders do not need another “shiny widget.” They need to understand where their business is stuck, and then pull the right lever to grow without chaos.
When more work breaks the business
Increase Construction did not begin as a recruitment and operations partner.
Drew and his team were originally brought in to help builders generate more work through marketing and sales. They were good at it. Sometimes too good.
The more leads they drove, the more they exposed a deeper problem. The builder’s operational model could not keep up. Recruitment was patchy. Procurement was slow. Teams were stretched. Customer experience started to slip.
In Drew’s words, they were “breaking the model.”
With a recruitment background from London and a passion for business (he holds an MBA), he realised the solution was not just “more leads.” Builders needed a joined up way of thinking about work, people and process.
So the business rebranded from Critical Personnel to Increase Construction and built a framework to match.
The three problems every construction business has
Over time, Drew noticed the same patterns in almost every contractor and builder he worked with.
No matter the size – five people or five hundred – they had one or more of three problems:
- They need more work
- They need more of the right work
- They need the trades, contractors and permanent staff to do the work
Once he started putting it in those terms, something clicked. Every builder could see themselves somewhere on that spectrum.
Some were desperate for opportunity. Others were drowning in low margin jobs they should never have taken. Many had strong pipelines but were stuck on people – supervisors, estimators, carpenters, roofers, tilers, you name it.
That simple three-part lens became the starting point for everything Increase Construction now does. It is the doorway into a bigger model Drew calls buildability.
Buildability and the four levers: marketing, operations, sales, technology
If the three problems describe where a business is, buildability is about what to do next.
Drew has distilled it down to four levers:
- Marketing
- Operations
- Sales
- Technology
Or as he frames it, MOST.
Once a builder has identified whether they need more work, better work, or better people, Drew’s team sits with them and asks: which lever needs to move first?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. A builder who lives off word of mouth does not necessarily need a fifty thousand dollar website. Another builder might have a glossy brand and plenty of enquiry, but no process for turning paid leads into real jobs.
The work in the first month is often not “doing marketing” or “running ads.” It is diagnosing the bottleneck and forcing a harder question back on the owner:
Do you really need more work – or do you need better people and better process for the work you already have?
Why more leads are not always the answer
That question matters, because as Drew points out, not all leads are equal.
A phone call from a warm referral or a long-time local contact behaves very differently to a click from a Facebook ad or Google campaign. Yet many builders treat them the same way.
If a business does not change how it handles digital enquiry – speed, follow up, expectations – it is easy to declare “paid traffic does not work.”
In reality, the process is wrong, not the channel.
Drew’s view is simple:
- Internet leads need more speed and more TLC
- They need to be handled differently to a walk in or a long term word of mouth client
- The goal is to move them into the same pipeline eventually, but the early touch points must match how they found you
That is why Increase Construction does not just “make it rain leads.” They work on how those leads are treated, and whether the business can deliver on them without blowing up operations.
Scaling smarts with AI, not just staff
One of the big challenges Drew faced was scale.
He and his business partner Sean could only personally work with a handful of clients at a deep level. The choice was either price themselves out of reach, or stay small as a micro consultancy.
The circuit breaker was AI.
By building AI into their workflows – from note taking and meeting summaries, through to templated processes and content – they found a way to:
- Systemise what worked across multiple builders
- Deliver marketing, operations, sales and tech support
- Replace the need for multiple full time in-house roles for their clients
Their own rule of thumb is ambitious: if they cannot replace three full time employees for less than the cost of one through their model, they are not doing their job.
For builders, the lesson is bigger than AI itself. It is about putting in a “little bit of effort” to understand the tools, so the business can become more efficient and effective without simply throwing more people at every problem.
Case study: Watermark and the top ten per cent
In the insurance building world, people are everything.
Make safes, emergency works and large scale event response rely on trades turning up fast and doing the job properly. Missed calls, slow response or poor quality can quickly damage relationships with insurers and clients.
Increase Construction works closely with Hew and the team at Watermark Construction, one of the top insurance builders in Australia. Their mantra is blunt:
Ninety per cent of the work goes to ten per cent of the contractors.
Increase Construction’s role is twofold:
- Improving the quality of Watermark’s contractors so the business can confidently win more work and deliver on it
- Acting as an on tap recruitment and procurement partner for permanent staff and trades so they can respond to events faster than competitors
Because they have been working together for years, Watermark now has a genuine competitive advantage when talking to insurers. They know they can deliver, because their contractor base has been deliberately improved, not just grown.
Case study: Sutton Building – regional growth without chaos
The model is not just for big metro players.
Drew tells the story of Sutton Building in Gympie, a regional business in a tough market for trades. The founder was approaching retirement and facing a choice: change the business or risk having no business at all.
Over three years, Increase Construction helped them move through the three stages:
- Stage one: more work
They hired an operations manager (now CEO) from a business background, not a building background. With that leadership in place, the first step was to get the brand and website right and bring in more consistent work. - Stage two: more of the right work
The business had been heavily exposed to some low margin insurance work. They shifted into more profitable new builds and commercial jobs, matching the work to what they actually wanted to deliver. - Stage three: trades and people to do the work
Today, the CEO simply briefs Increase Construction:
“We need a new project manager.”
“We need a landscaper at Peregian.”
“We need a tiler in Hervey Bay.”
The internal team no longer spends weeks ringing around Google results hoping someone calls back. Increase Construction handles the search using its data driven approach.
The result is a regional builder growing on a monthly retainer model, without hiring three internal full time roles to manage recruitment and procurement.
Turning recruitment into a data game
One of the most interesting parts of Drew’s model is how he thinks about recruitment.
It is not just Seek and LinkedIn. It is data.
Some examples of how they work:
- Job titles and adverts are constantly tested and adjusted, not set and forgotten
- Face to camera videos are used in job ads to lift response and show culture
- Every good CV becomes part of a “lookalike” database for future roles
- Social media can then be used to target very specific avatars (for example, tilers in regional Queensland)
Instead of typing “tiler Rockhampton” into Google and competing for the same ten people everyone else is calling, Increase Construction runs targeted campaigns where trades self-identify and respond.
The big time saver for builders is how candidates are presented.
Rather than forwarding on a pile of CVs, Drew records short Zoom interviews, asks business specific questions, and sends both CV and video. For a busy director or operations manager, that is the difference between a half day of interviews and a fifteen minute review.
Flexible work, tight process
Internally, Increase Construction also lives what it teaches.
The team all live on the Sunshine Coast, but work remotely. They have young families and value time outside of work, but still treat their flexible setup like a proper office:
- Everyone turns up online at nine o’clock
- Slack is used for internal communication
- Calendars and tasks are managed tightly
The view is not that every builder should send everyone home. Many roles in construction still need to be in the office or on site. Instead, Drew argues for experimenting:
- Try one day a week from home for suitable roles
- Test regional hires where skills are high and salaries lower
- Build systems first, then flexibility around them
The common thread is mindset. Owners and leaders must be willing to grow a little themselves, rather than simply hoping a new staff member or consultant will “fix it for them.”
What the best builders do differently
Working with some of Australia’s fastest growing builders has given Drew a clear view on what separates the good from the rest.
It is not just the quality of the build, or the size of the jobs. It is people and story.
From his perspective, the best builders:
- Have a clear founder or business story that can be told at every level of the company
- Ensure the leader is accessible to staff, not locked away
- Stay personally involved in recruitment for key roles, even as they grow
- Show genuine passion for the end product, whether that is a small repair or a multimillion dollar home
In Watermark’s case, Hew still interviews every person who joins the business and makes himself available to the team. Retention is higher because people feel that connection from day one.
For Drew, passion in the end product is the simplest definition of a good builder. If you care about what you hand over, you are far more likely to care about the people, systems and relationships that make it possible.
Key lessons for builders
For builders listening to the conversation, there are some clear takeaways:
- Diagnose before you act
Be honest about whether your biggest constraint is more work, better work, or people. Do not jump straight to “more leads.” - Pull the right lever
Decide whether marketing, operations, sales or technology needs to move first. You cannot pull all of them at once. - Treat different leads differently
Word of mouth, walk-ins and paid traffic need different handling. Speed and follow up matter more for digital enquiry. - Turn recruitment into a process, not a panic
Build databases, test copy, use video, and think in terms of data, not just job boards. - Use technology to scale your smarts
Note taking tools, AI summaries and automated workflows are simple starting points that can free you up to actually lead. - Own your story and stay accessible
Make sure everyone in the business can explain who you are, what you stand for, and why you build. And make sure they can reach you when it matters.
Increase Construction’s model will not be the only way to solve these problems. But the thinking behind it is hard to ignore.
Understand where you are.
Pull the right lever.
Build the right team.
And grow without chaos.
If this conversation hit a few pain points in your business resourcing, recruitment, bottlenecks, or scaling, take a closer look at how Increase Construction works with builders across Australia: https://www.increaseconstruction.com/thegoodbuilder
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