Life time of experience…always room for one more
17 June 2010
Krautz & Summerhill a thriving business that’s been running in Albury since 1978, has around 30 employees and a lifetime of experience in commercial concrete construction, formwork and pre cast concrete panel manufacturing.
Alan Krautz and Tom Rollings are proud business owners that employ workers ranging from concreter’s carpenters, design draftsmen, project managers and estimators. Their work includes and not limited to commercial, industrial, retail, educational and institutional projects.
With a large number of projects ongoing the need for estimators was something high on their list, as Julie Filer – Office Manager of Krautz & Summerhill explains, “finding estimators can be difficult, experienced builders/estimators will usually work for themselves or go into some of the larger companies to pursue project management roles”.
After one of their estimators left after many years with the company, they advertised the position and received a number of responses however they just didn’t have the right experience. Eventually they found one estimator from Cobram who made the move to Albury, but they still required another to share the work load.
In the meantime Regional Development Australia Murray (RDAM) had sponsored Jaliya on a Skilled Regional Visa as his skills as an engineer and experience in construction would be beneficial to the region. With the skilled migration team following through with information on the Murray region prior to Jaliya arriving, he was able to start looking at the types of positions advertised and came across Krautz & Summerhill’s job vacancy. Jaliya contacted Julie via email and the correspondence started.
When Julie the office manager of Krautz & Summerhill suggested the possibility of employing someone from Sri Lanka the guys thought she was joking, however, after looking at Jaliya’s qualifications and experience they decided to make contact with Jaliya who by then had recently arrived in Australia.
“One of our concerns was the language barrier as English for Jaliya is not his native tongue, so we contacted Nicole from RDAM Skilled migration unit and we were able to do the initial job interview at RDAM’s office with Nicole by Jaliya’s side to make sure everything was clear and he understood the role and the job process.” “Jaliya has been with Krautz & Summerhill for 10 months now and has fitted in extremely well with all the staff. He routinely is out on jobs independently estimating which has proved very successful.” explains Julie.
Jaliya is enjoying the different technology used for the position in Australia as he says “the fundamentals of project administration are the same so it’s easy enough to pick up. The staff here are wonderful and my family and I just love the region, we can see ourselves being here for a long time.”
