Last month around 100 residential building company owners spent two days locked in on solving their biggest constraints at the 2026 TPB Queenstown Summit. The Professional Builder founder Martin Amos explains what the room worked through — and how you can get in on the next one.
Halfway through the Summit’s second day, 100 building company owners were on their feet calling out the dollar value of the leads they had just generated, while a running total climbed on a leaderboard at the front of the ballroom. When the 30 minute time limit was up, it read $446 million. That was one session out of a two-day programme, and it gives you a fair sense of the pace.
Most of the owners in the room had left live sites — and a stack of quotes — to be in attendance. The programme was built around one idea — a building company is usually held back by a small number of constraints, and dealing with the biggest one first makes everything after it easier. The room worked through the following five.
Profit
I opened up the event with the Constraint Game. I put a real builder’s numbers in front of the room, split everyone into teams of three or four, and had them work out the single constraint costing that builder the most, then argue for the fix before the best answer was voted on and read out.
The exercise caught a lot of people out for the same reason. Winning more jobs does nothing for a company whose real problem is a 15% margin, or framing and interior linings running well over the forecast hours.
Positioning
Specialty coach Richard Phiskie, who runs Dimension Building in Timaru, was interviewed on how he positioned his own company so clients chose him without lining up two or three other builders to price against.
A lot of it came down to what a prospect reads and sees before the first site visit, so by the time price comes up, the decision is already half made.
Process
The “8 Hour Heist” exercise had owners calculate their Professional Builder’s Rate — salary plus company profit, divided by fifty weeks, divided again by the hours they work, so they could see what an hour of their time is actually worth.
From there they built a Stop Doing List, taking every task that pays below that rate and deciding whether to eliminate it, delegate it, outsource it or automate it. A coach sat at each table running the numbers so nobody guessed. The merchant runs, the timesheet chasing and the after-hours quoting tended to be first on the list.
People
Speciality coach Lloyd Godfrey’s On-Site Profit session broke the job into four plays — site set-up, daily start-ups, trade coordination, and material handling, each followed by questions from the floor.
These are the points where a fixed-price job quietly bleeds hours — for example, a team standing around waiting on materials that did not turn up, or a chippie redoing work because the trades were sequenced in the wrong order.
Pipeline
The “$446 million of pipeline” session was Owen Chambers’ “Winning Work in a Slow Market: Three steps to generate 10 leads in thirty minutes.”
Alongside the contract value, each table tracked how many referral texts they sent — builders messaging past clients and subbies — to surface who is planning to build in the next 12 months. The $446 million came out of that half hour.
Off the tools, together
The sessions were only half of it. Each morning opened with a walk and coffee along the lakefront, and a run club for anyone up for it. On the first evening the room boarded the 1912 steamship TSS Earnslaw at Steamer Wharf and crossed the lake to Walter Peak for a BBQ dinner and a farm show, and were back at the wharf by nine.
We also organised a day of motorskiing with our boardroom members which was an unreal experience. Getting a helicopter up the mountain to go motor biking in the snow — 10 out of 10 would recommend this to any of you reading this right now.
The awards part of the Summit recognised members who had put the work in over the quarter. The Women in Construction Leadership Award went to Karen Iversen of Smith & Sons Manawatu.
Member of the Quarter went to Tia Owen of TAK Construction, who became the event’s most sought-after man after sharing with the room how he is using AI in his building business to generate leads on autopilot, and to operate 80% of his sales system for him.
Coming to a town near you
If reading this makes you wish you had been there, the next round of events is already scheduled. We run them across New Zealand, Australia and the US through the year, not only in Queenstown. Our next big one is on the Gold Coast in October. Others are shorter regional sessions closer to home.
You can see what is on and where on the Events page at www.theprofessionalbuilder.com, or by scanning the QR code below.
