Three builder insolvencies on his very first development. An engineering background transplanted into residential construction. A decade in the classroom. Nagy Mourad has seen this industry from every angle, and what he sees concerns him. Not the numbers. The preparation.

Most people who end up in construction got there the usual way. Apprenticeship. Trade. Maybe a builder’s licence eventually, if they pushed for it.

On the latest episode of The Good Builder Podcast, we sat down with someone who got there a very different way.

Nagy Mourad got there by watching three builders go bankrupt on his first development project.

He had come from a career in telecommunications, leading national field and contract operations for Optus, Telstra and the NBN. He had a Bachelor of Engineering, a senior management role and a block of land. The plan was simple: subdivide, build two townhouses, keep the day job.

It took three years and three builder collapses to finish. When he finally arrived on site to salvage the project, he found a trade had poured concrete down the pipes beneath the slab because they had not been paid.

He cut the slab open, fixed it, and quietly started studying.

When you can relate to someone, when you have been in their shoes and you feel their pain, you cannot say no.

That detour into study, first a Certificate III in Building and Construction, then the Diploma, became a career reinvention. Mourad now runs Beehive Homes Constructions in Melbourne, developing townhouse projects under his own licence. He teaches the Diploma of Building and Construction. And through his newly launched Builder Registration Training, he helps aspiring Victorian builders prepare for registration in an environment where the rules are changing.

He is one of the rarest things in the Australian residential industry: someone who is simultaneously a registered builder, an active developer and a qualified trainer. Each role, he says, sharpens the others.

“The builder part gives you the practice. The teacher and engineer side covers the theory. The developer side puts the big spin on the bigger picture. At the end, you have a business, you need to make it profitable.”

The Problem Is Not Volume. It Is Preparation.

Australia’s housing conversation is almost entirely about numbers. How many homes we need. How many tradies we are short of. How many builders need to come through the system.

Mourad is willing to say the quiet part out loud: more builders is not the answer on its own.

“We keep saying we need more builders. What about the quality aspect? We need more better prepared builders. That is what I personally think.”

He is not criticising the people in the system. He is criticising the gaps between the stages.

In seven years of teaching builder registration at one of Victoria’s largest training organisations, he observed that around 70 per cent of every cohort came from carpentry backgrounds. Which makes sense. Carpenters follow a residential project from slab to lock-up to handover. They see more of the process than most other trades. The transition to builder feels natural.

But Mourad argues that a lifetime on the tools does not automatically prepare someone for the business of building.

“You could have a builder who is fantastic with their technical knowledge. But competency is not just one dimensional. At a point in time, they have to balance between the technical competency and the business competency.”

He draws a sharp distinction between good knowledge and good preparation. Many candidates arrive at registration confident in what they know from experience. What they have not done is translate that knowledge into the language and structure the assessment actually requires.

“Good knowledge does not equal good preparation. You have to understand the requirements and work backwards from the destination.”

The thinking that got you here will not get you there. You need to expand your thinking and take it to the next level.

The Journey Framework

One of the most useful ideas Mourad brings to the conversation is simple, but rarely articulated in construction: the skills you need at each stage of a building career are completely different, and treating them as the same is a structural problem.

He frames it as a journey with distinct phases. The trade phase is about developing technical skill, earning a living, learning a craft. The registration phase is about understanding the regulatory and compliance requirements of running a licensed business. The business phase is something else again.

“Going for your driver’s licence and running a transport company are two very different things. The thinking that got you here will not get you there.”

In the tertiary world, this kind of structured progression is the norm. You know what qualification leads to which role, and what skills each stage requires. In construction, that pathway has always existed informally, passed down through experience, absorbed through osmosis or sometimes not passed down at all.

Mourad is trying to make it explicit. Reverse engineering the destination and mapping the skills required to reach it, at each stage, in the right order.

The Single Biggest Risk on Any Site

Mourad has a standard quiz he runs in class. One word, he tells students. What is your biggest risk in construction?

Most do not get it.

The answer is water.

“Statistics reflect that we have a very high percentage of projects with water damage. Residential, commercial. And to say this is an Australian problem would be misleading. It is simply testament to the strength of water.”

His point is about respect, not alarm. Waterproofing is a discipline. Condensation management is an engineering problem. The new NCC 2025 introduced more explicit requirements around condensation, which he welcomes, because it brings formal attention to something the industry has historically treated as an afterthought.

He spent time on one of his own projects developing a performance solution because he wanted to waterproof both below and above the screen, and the Australian Standard at the time only supported one approach. He had to argue for it. He believes the standard is now being updated to reflect that approach.

“Do you really want to spend hard-earned money on a project and six months later find your bathrooms need to be redone because waterproofing was not done right? I am sure no one wants that. But it still happens.”

A compliant home is not necessarily a quality-built home. The Australian standard sets the minimum. The goal is to understand that and then exceed it thoughtfully.

He also makes an important distinction that tends to get lost in conversations about lifting standards: compliance and quality are not the same thing. A compliant home meets the minimum. A quality home exceeds it, strategically and with full awareness of what that means for the structure, the certifier, and the client.

“Exceeding the requirements also needs tactics and smartness. Construction has enormous interdependency. You cannot change one thing without an on-flow effect.”

Builder Registration Is Changing. Preparation Matters More Than Ever.

Victoria’s Building and Plumbing Commission has flagged significant changes to the builder registration process. The face-to-face interview requirement has been removed. A risk-based application system is being introduced. All applicants will now go through a formal examination process.

Mourad sees this as a reasonable response to the need for more consistent, measurable standards. He also sees it as a reason why informal preparation is no longer enough.

“We know the process and the process is changing. If you know the destination, work backwards. Make sure you are using your experience in the right context.”

For those entering registration now, the NCC is not optional background reading. It is active working knowledge. He tells his students he reads it as bedtime material, not to make a point, but to impress how intimate a builder needs to become with it.

“You need to know how to navigate it because something will happen on site and you need to look it up quickly. Bracing, slab, masonry, tie downs. Something will come up and you need to be ready.”

The MFR Debate and Protecting Small Builders

The proposed changes to Minimal Financial Requirements for builders in Victoria generated significant concern in the industry when they first emerged. The original proposal risked creating compliance burdens that smaller operators would struggle to absorb.

Mourad’s position is that consumer protection is non-negotiable. He applies that logic consistently, including to himself as a client.

“The mentality of protecting the consumer needs to be there one thousand per cent. No ifs or buts about it.”

But he also argues the industry cannot afford to lose the small, competent operators who carry a disproportionate share of Australia’s residential building work.

“We also have to keep in mind the viability of small builders when we look at introducing change. We want to keep them operating, keep them viable, and keep their contribution to the industry.”

He noted at the time of recording that the Commission had signalled it would relax some reporting requirements, grandfather existing eligibility arrangements, and look at longer transition timeframes. No official announcement had been made at that point, with a 1 July date flagged.

NCC 2025: Get on With It

The decision by Victoria to adopt NCC 2025 ahead of New South Wales and Queensland, which both pushed implementation to 2027, has been a point of some discussion in the industry.

Mourad declines to get drawn into the debate about timing or alignment. His position is practical.

“I threw it behind my back, the difference in timing, and I said, all right, it is a government call. The call said, we would like to benefit from the change. Let us benefit this year instead of pushing it out.”

Lead-free plumbing fittings. Condensation management. Changes to the commercial provisions. These are improvements with health and safety consequences. Waiting for national alignment, in his view, is the wrong priority.

He also points out that states routinely learn from each other when they operate on different timelines. Victoria adopted psychological hazard requirements into workplace health and safety law in December 2025, drawing heavily from Queensland’s framework, which had been in place for several years.

“It comes and goes. We learn from each other.”

Why the Name

Beehive Homes is not an arbitrary brand choice.

Mourad points to honey as the only known food that does not spoil. Samples found in Egyptian tombs, thousands of years old, were still intact. The bee, he says, is a symbol of collaborative precision, a highly organised system where individual contribution builds something that lasts.

“The combination of what bees perform, what they build, their importance to the life cycle, it all got my thinking going in this direction.”

He also has a YouTube channel called Build Like an Egyptian, which has become a quiet vehicle for showing construction done right. Short-form videos demonstrating waterproofing, slab preparation, the thinking behind the process.

“Most of us do it right. I am just trying to be a projection of this.”

What Makes a Good Builder

At the end of every Good Builder podcast, the question is always the same. Nagy Mourad’s answer was characteristically precise.

“Technically competent and business savvy. Honest, because you are dealing with people and sometimes the biggest expense they will ever undertake. And commercially savvy, knowing how to grow the business, serve the client and maintain a good reputation.”

He did not mention tools. He did not mention years of experience. He mentioned the combination of skills required at the stage of the journey where a builder is actually running a business, which is a different thing entirely from the stage where they were learning a trade.

That distinction is exactly why he does what he does.

Listen to the full episode on The Good Builder Podcast. Find Nagy Mourad at beehivehomes.com.au, on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, and on YouTube at Build Like an Egyptian.

More Industry Profiles: Phillip Livingston: Building for the People Who Built Australia

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Author: TGB Editorial