The chief executive of QA Build runs a business that owns a slice of its own supply chain, works two months ahead of site and is building its own trade college. He told the Good Builder Podcast the thinking started with a roofing shortage.

Most builders answer a supply problem by finding another supplier. James Drever buys the supplier.

Drever is chief executive of QA Build, the residential, commercial and civil builder established by the Puljich family in 2016 and now wholly owned by the ASX listed over 50s community operator GemLife. He joined the group in 2017 and worked through site management, national construction and national building manager roles before taking the top job.

The group has grown quickly. GemLife was among the steepest risers in Queensland in our Top 100 Queensland Builders report last financial year, although off a small base. What sits underneath that growth is not a strategy that started in a boardroom. It started with roofs.

“COVID was a real hard time for every builder,” Drever said. “Roofing became really a big problem. Mother Nature didn’t help us with the biggest hailstorm that came through.”

His response set the pattern that has run through the business since. “See a roadblock. Okay, what are we going to do about the roadblock? Remove the roadblock,” he said. “If it’s a business that is not able to supply because they’re going everywhere else, well, I’ll just buy that business and then take over myself.”

Remove the roadblock, take control of the roadblock, there is no more roadblock.

What removing the roadblock looks like on the ground

QA Build now runs solar, electrical and air conditioning businesses inside the group, alongside a cabinetry operation it acquired outright.

“We bought a cabinetry business that basically had a staff of about 15. We’re now 55 plus,” Drever said. “And we’re punching out 60 to 70 kitchens a month out of the same size, but robotics are playing a key factor now.”

The balance sheet behind that is not available to most residential builders, and Drever is the first to say the model suits a group operating at scale. The question underneath it travels further than the answer does. Every building business has one supplier or one trade whose failure stops more jobs than any other. Most have never named it, priced it, or worked out what owning it would cost against what losing it already costs.

Vertical integration in residential construction

Vertical integration is when a builder owns the businesses that supply it rather than contracting them. In residential construction that usually means bringing cabinetry, electrical, joinery or transport in house. The trade is capital and management load in exchange for control over price, sequence and certainty of supply.

The business runs two months ahead of the site

The second piece is a planning lead that the office holds regardless of what site is doing.

“I want to turn around that I’m two months ahead of construction at all times,” Drever said. Drafting, estimating, architecture and interiors all work to that lead. “We’re always working a year in front so that you’re always progressing. So that you’re not being reactive.”

He values the buffer in terms of people rather than programme.

“Say you lose an estimator. That can cripple a business pretty quick,” he said. “But if I’m 20 jobs in front, I’ve got two months now that I don’t have to worry about.” That is a different use of lead time than most operators make of it. The buffer is not there to absorb delay on a job. It is there so the business can lose a key person without losing a quarter, which is a quieter risk than anything in the market and a more common one than most builders running a building business plan for.

Volume and quality are held together by training, not inspection

Drever said the company has 15 to 16 projects live nationally with another seven due for release inside eight months, described one project carrying about 130 homes under construction at once, and put build times at around 16 weeks.

Asked how quality survives at that rate, he went to induction rather than inspection.

“You can put a house up, but it starts at the foundation,” he said. “The foundation for me starts with the training and the team.” He treats the industry standard as a floor rather than a target. “What does the industry tell you as a whole? For me, that’s not where my bar is.”

The same logic runs into how builders manage subcontractors. Drever put the trade base at close to 5,500 to 6,000 across Australia and said the business is running its first race day for its trades this year. “It’s all good for suppliers to do for us, but what about everyone else?” he said. “If you’re not willing to spend the time and invest it back into them, you won’t get the product you deserve.”

He also described a philosophy handed down through the Puljich family and used as the internal quality test: if it is not good enough for our own family, it is not good enough for our clients.

The knowledge leaving the industry worries him more than the headcount

The part of the conversation Drever returned to most was not scale. It was who will be teaching in thirty years.

“Kids aren’t interested to do the apprenticeships. Well, why? That’s the first question. No one’s asking that question,” he said. “The older generation that have taught are leaving. What scares me is when you think in thirty years’ time, well, who’s teaching?”

QA Build has partnered with Construction Skills Queensland to run its own trade college, covering more than carpentry. “We want to grow our own,” Drever said. Alongside it sit school visits, try a trade days that use the group’s residential, commercial and civil arms to show a range of pathways, and a deliberate push at career changers in their late 30s and 40s and at women entering the trades.

“A trade was about you wanting to be the best at your craft. You were proud to be that,” he said. “That’s what needs to come back.”

Accountability runs in both directions

Drever is direct about holding suppliers to what they sell, and says the relationships survive it. He pointed to supplier relationships running 28 and 29 years and staff at 35 years with the group.

“A warranty to me, if you’re saying your product is the best, well, if it fails and there is a problem, show me that you’re going to honour it,” he said.

He applies the same standard internally, and says mistakes are the cost of letting people make decisions at all. “Staff will make mistakes. But as long as they learn from their mistakes then they understand and then they have that drive factor themselves.”

What he says is coming next

Drever says the group has spent close to four years developing a transportable system designed to move three to four homes on a single truck rather than one, and that it has been built and tested.

He was careful not to oversell it, and framed it as a manufacturing answer to a labour problem rather than a new product category. For builders watching prefabrication as a route to lifting build quality at volume, the detail worth watching is not the panel. It is whether the transport economics change.

What makes a good builder

Asked our standing question, Drever did not answer with systems.

“You’re basically getting given the trust from a client to produce them their vision and give them that home that they deserve,” he said. He measures it by who does the praising. “One of the biggest compliments you can ever get as a builder is building for a builder that’s been and done himself.”

He credits the framing to his grandfather. “The ones that can talk the talk, the ones that will walk the walk. But the one that can put the two together, they’re the people you want to be around, because they will go places.”

Not every builder can buy a cabinetry factory or hold two months of drafting in front of site. The transferable part of Drever’s model is cheaper than that. It is knowing which single thing is most likely to stop the job, knowing who controls it, and deciding in advance whether that answer is acceptable. Most businesses only find out the answer on the day it fails.

Listen to the full conversation on the Good Builder Podcast.

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Last updated: 15 September 2026

General information only. This article is intended for general information purposes and does not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice. Laws, regulations and industry requirements vary by state and territory and change over time. Builders and trades professionals should seek independent advice relevant to their specific circumstances before making business, legal, or financial decisions.

Author: TGB Editorial