What is the origin story of Vale?
We first met while studying engineering at UC. We shared a passion for health and fitness (among other things) and began running regularly. This ongoing passion has seen us both compete in the Coast to Coast, as well as instilling a health and fitness culture within the team at Vale.
After graduation, Zach started a civil construction company in Christchurch specialising in EQC works and retaining walls, while Callum began a career in geotechnical engineering in Christchurch and later Auckland.
A few years later, we were both completing our first property projects in Christchurch, developing new build standalone houses, although we didn’t know at the time that we were both doing the same thing.
Zach reached out to Callum, as a practising geotechnical engineer, about some retaining wall work. Coincidentally, Callum was moving back to Christchurch from Auckland. We decided to start a company buying earthquake damaged ‘as is where is’ properties. We went on to remediate around 40 residential properties and two commercial properties within three years, some of which we sold on completion and others retained as long term investments.
During our remediation work we soon realised that the living conditions in some of the housing stock around Christchurch were substandard and many older houses were costly to maintain. We also noticed a shift in buyer preferences towards newer properties with lower maintenance, giving homeowners more time for themselves on weekends rather than looking after the ‘quarter acre dream’ that was part of the Kiwi psyche for decades.
We shifted our focus to developing high-quality, affordable new homes and Vale was born, with eight townhouses at 223 Peterborough St their first development project.
How do your engineering degrees and backgrounds serve you in your roles?
Our engineering studies have equipped us with a good overall understanding of design inputs and outputs, which has lots of practical benefits in terms of achieving buildability and cost efficiency in construction.
In more general terms our engineering degrees have given us a strong technical foundation to approach problems and come up with good solutions. This is really useful as it allows us to break down big projects into smaller tasks and sequence them effectively to achieve the optimal outcome.
What appeals to you both about living and running a company in Christchurch?
There is a lot of opportunity in Christchurch following the earthquakes. We have a unique, once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of the rebuild of a city and contribute to it becoming a great place to live.
Christchurch is an awesome place to live and run a company, especially if you love health and fitness. As a major city, its close proximity to the hills and mountains for running, biking and skiing is unmatched.
The appeal of Christchurch doesn’t end there. The future growth phase we see the city progressing through is really exciting. Christchurch has come a long way from 2011 when the streets were deserted. Now there is real liveliness and heaps of activity in the CBD which is awesome to see. The best part is there is still plenty more space for people to come and enjoy this city. Combined with the relatively low cost of housing here, this makes Christchurch a really attractive city for people to move to.
What would you like to see in the future of home building and commercial developments in the city?
More residential intensification of the inner city suburbs, rather than geographical spread. Encouraging more people to live in the CBD by building more high quality homes, which will in turn result in greater demand for inner city hospitality, office and retail businesses.
In terms of home building, we’d like to see the industry adapt to more widespread use of low-maintenance, efficient and sustainable materials, which are high priorities for us on all of our developments.
What is your favourite part about your jobs, and what do you find most challenging?
Delivering a great product every time. This is largely done through solid internal systems and processes within our company. We get the whole team on board with developing and contributing to these.
We also love working alongside great people from start to finish on every project. Many are people we went through university with, as well as other professionals who make the industry a really enjoyable place to work.
The biggest challenges we face are probably familiar headaches for lots of business owners. We have a team which gets spread pretty thin across many disciplines within the company including sales, marketing, consulting, construction and finance.
When looking back at your time at UC, what memories or experiences stand out the most?
Late nights cramming for exams or completing assignments with great people. Like the real world, the engineering degree is collaborative, so you work as a team on a lot of assignments. We both met some exceptional people through our studies who are still part of our lives personally and professionally. Then of course all the parties and social events after you’d finished the hard work.
