Livingstone Building is construction and project management specialists and undertake a wide range of project work, which include McDonald's Restaurants nationally (since 1994), Fonterra, NZ FarmSource, Bunnings Warehouse, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Ministry of Education, Metlifecare and Bupa Retirement Villages.
Livingstone Building has roots dating back to 1947 in the small Waikato town of Te Awamutu. Since then, Livingstone has expanded into five North Island regional offices and completed projects with a variety of companies and organisations all over New Zealand.
Livingstone has a large pool of directly employed, Quantity Surveyors, Project and Site Managers, highly skilled carpenters and a complimentary apprenticeship scheme which gives us maximum control over labour, programming and scheduling of resources. We work across all key sectors including commercial, industrial, residential and have a facilities and maintenance division for ongoing maintenance and small works.
We place an emphasis on hiring locally when required to supplement our resources. We believe in engaging local subcontractors and suppliers who are suitably qualified and equally focused on delivering to programme, cost, quality and health and safety expectations.
Livingstone Building continues to grow and evolve to meet the needs of the market and to build excellence, as evidenced by our award winning projects across multiple industry sectors.
Livingstone Building supports a variety of different community organisations including:
We also sponsor the following community initiatives in the Hamilton area:
Other sponsorship is generously administered in the regions where our offices are.
Applicants wanting to apply for a position at Livingstone will typically apply online via the careers website.
We recruit by:
From there an applicant is phone interviewed to screen them for suitability for an interview with the Training Co-ordinator, Project Manager/P&C representative.
An interview is conducted based on questions around the applicant's background and personality. Their experience for the role they are applying for. The applicant's Health & Safety knowledge will be tested and character.
A short company based video is played to them to test their listening and literacy skills by writing 2-3 paragraphs of what they have viewed.
A maths test is conducted with a variety of questions including additional, subtraction, multiplication, division and volume and area.
From the results of these tests and the interview, a decision is made to hire or decline the applicant. Generally, this process takes a week. If successful, the applicant will receive a contract to work with Livingstone.
Livingstone Building is heavily invested in the apprentice training industry and look to recruit apprentice carpenters in the regions for the next generation of building professionals.
Currently, we have 41 apprentices (21% of our entire workforce) with an additional 5 vacancies soon to be filled. We have a dedicated in-house Training Coordinator whose focus is primarily on carpenter and apprenticeship
training.
Apprentice training is completed in accordance with BCITO requirements. Apprentices undergo three monthly assessments of bookwork and practical unit standards.
A standard apprenticeship is completed over 4 years with a satisfactory pay scale (plus tool allowance). There is the possibility of other compensation benefits. From there you may choose to continue your learning where you can look to complete extra study and consider our Cadetship to complete NZ Certificate in related trades (level 5) or NZ Diploma in Construction or Quantity Surveying (level 6). You could become a Site Manager and eventually a Project Manager, responsible for your own project.
As part of the cadetship we also have opportunities for Quantity Surveyors, Site Managers and Project Managers. This programme provides practical work experience to individuals who are studying towards a QS qualification or who have shown an interest in a career in Site or Project Management. These cadet roles provide an important real-life experience which is invaluable when embarking on a career in these areas. We currently have 8 cadet roles within our business.
Livingstone works with a number of schools and tech institutes to provide work experience programmes for their students (Gateway/Pathway) programmes.