There are plenty of ways construction businesses try to win more work: tenders, marketing, networking, advertising and increasingly AI-assisted business development.
But underneath all of those things sits something much more fundamental: trust.
I explored this with Irene Scott on Built. Trusted. Chosen. Irene is a civil engineer with around 30 years in engineering and leads pitt&sherry’s national bridges and structures team.
Our conversation moved well beyond bridges. We talked about hiring, leadership, difficult client conversations, referrals, reputation and what happens to human relationships as more business processes become automated.
For construction business owners and leaders, there were some important lessons.
Culture fit matters more than filling a seat
One of the strongest points Irene made was around recruitment.
Technical competence obviously matters in engineering. But when Irene becomes involved in later-stage interviews, she is particularly interested in cultural fit.
She has seen technically capable people hired because the business needed somebody, despite reservations about whether they completely aligned with the team.
The consequences can spread much further than that individual.
Someone who contributes negatively, doesn’t take responsibility or simply approaches work very differently can affect everyone around them.
Skills gaps can often be developed. Cultural misalignment is considerably harder to fix.
Irene sometimes puts candidates under a little pressure during interviews to understand how they respond.
As I mentioned during our conversation, people can be a little like toothpaste. Apply pressure and what’s inside tends to come out.
For construction businesses, recruitment shouldn’t only answer, “Can this person do the job?”
It should also ask, “What happens to our team when we add this person to it?”
Difficult conversations can actually build trust
Nobody particularly enjoys difficult client conversations.
But Irene made the point that these conversations can contain an enormous amount of value.
If a client’s expectations are different from what your team thought had been agreed, avoiding the issue rarely improves things.
Instead, Irene’s approach is essentially to put everything on the table: this is what we believed we were delivering, now tell us what you believed we were delivering.
Often the underlying problem is miscommunication rather than bad intent.
An open conversation gives both parties an opportunity to identify the gap and find a way forward.
In trades and construction, projects rarely run without challenges. Trust isn’t created by pretending those challenges don’t exist.
Sometimes it’s created by how you deal with them.
Reputation is a business development strategy
Irene described Tasmania as a particularly relationship-driven market where people know each other and reputation matters enormously.
But the same principle applies throughout construction.
People talk.
Builders know subcontractors. Consultants know contractors. Project managers know engineers. Clients ask other people who they trust.
Much of pitt&sherry’s work reflects this.
Major opportunities might come through formal tenders, but the opportunity to participate can originate from relationships built on previous projects. Smaller projects can sometimes begin with something even simpler: a phone call from somebody who knows what you’ve done before.
That is marketing in one of its most powerful forms.
The project you’re delivering today isn’t only current revenue. Done well, it becomes evidence for why someone should choose you tomorrow.
The best referrals are built on trust
The same principle extends to referrals.
Irene described referrals within engineering as largely organic. A client needs a particular specialist and someone says, “We know somebody who can help.”
But there is an important reason those recommendations matter.
When you recommend somebody, you’re giving away a little piece of your own reputation.
If they perform well, you’ve helped your client solve a problem and strengthened both relationships.
If they perform badly, that can reflect on you too.
That makes strong collaboration partners incredibly valuable for construction businesses.
Rather than viewing every other business purely as a supplier or subcontractor, there is considerable value in building a trusted network of people you genuinely feel comfortable recommending.
Strong teams give people ownership and responsibility
Irene leads a national team of around 90 people spread across different offices.
That makes command-and-control management impractical.
Instead, leadership is distributed.
There are strong people throughout the organisation who lead locally, stay connected with their teams and are trusted with responsibility.
The employee ownership model at pitt&sherry also contributes to that mindset. People can feel they are helping build something they have a genuine stake in.
This is relevant even if your business doesn’t have an employee ownership structure.
People generally take greater responsibility when they’re actually given responsibility.
The owner or senior manager doesn’t need to be involved in every decision. Building capable leaders underneath you creates room for both the business and its people to grow.
Human connection becomes more valuable as AI grows
AI is already entering Irene’s world.
At pitt&sherry, one practical application is helping make decades of company knowledge easier to search and use, particularly when finding relevant previous work or information for proposals.
But Irene made an important distinction.
The human relationship remains central.
AI might help us organise information, find previous projects or become more efficient. It doesn’t replace the trust between a client and somebody they know will answer the phone when a problem arises.
As businesses automate more processes, there may actually be an opportunity in being more human, not less.
The common thread through our conversation was simple: strong businesses are built on trust.
Hire people who strengthen the culture. Have the difficult conversations. Deliver work worth talking about. Build relationships with good people and protect your reputation.
Those things help you become the business people want to work with again.
Guest bio
Irene Scott is a civil engineer with around 30 years of engineering experience and a particular passion for bridges. She is General Manager – Bridges & Structures, Senior Principal Engineer and Executive Director at pitt&sherry, working across bridge assessments, rehabilitation, major projects, proof engineering and asset management.
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