# The Resilient Contractor Who Reads the Play and Hires A-Players > Source: https://uplift360.com.au/the-resilient-contractor-who-reads-the-play-and-hires-a-players/ > Author: Wes Towers > Date: 2026-09-29T10:46:00+10:00 Construction businesses rarely grow in a straight line. There are good years, difficult years, weather events, funding changes, material shortages, rising costs and unexpected shocks that no business owner can control. What matters is how prepared you are when those conditions change. That was one of the big themes in my conversation with **Justin Strunk, Chief Operating Officer of RABS Group**, on Built. Trusted. Chosen. Justin has spent 25 years in the road construction industry, and he described the period since 2020 as among the most tumultuous he has experienced. We spoke about everything from material supply and road funding to recruitment, culture, reputation and long-term business strategy. Several lessons stood out. ## Read the play before the crisis hits Justin uses an NFL analogy that I really liked: **read the play and see the blitz coming**. A leader cannot control a war affecting international supply chains, months of Melbourne rain or government funding decisions. What they can control is how early they recognise the implications. Justin talked about applying lessons from previous disruptions when material supply tightened again. Instead of treating every crisis as something completely new, experience becomes a playbook. What happened last time? What worked? What didn’t? Who needs to know? That also means communicating with staff, clients and financial partners rather than pretending everything is fine. The objective isn’t predicting every crisis. It’s getting better at recognising the patterns. ## Think in cycles, not straight-line growth One of the traps in construction is assuming a strong year will automatically be followed by another strong year. Justin sees the industry very differently. A construction business can have plenty of work booked and still struggle if three months of rain prevents crews from getting onto sites. Funding can change. Competition can increase. Supply can tighten. Justin compared it loosely to farming. Across a ten-year period, some years might be about building and investing. Others might be about protecting the business and surviving. Then there are the years when conditions line up and you need to make the most of them. That long-term perspective changes the way you define a successful year. Sometimes maintaining your position is itself a good result. ## Hire A-grade people, not just impressive résumés RABS changed its hiring philosophy several years ago. Rather than automatically prioritising industry experience, Justin increasingly looks at the person behind the résumé. How do they make decisions? How do they behave? Can they be trusted with responsibility? His philosophy for managers is particularly interesting. He wants people to approach decisions as though the company were their own business. That requires judgement rather than simply technical knowledge. Experience still matters for some roles, but Justin’s view is that good people will learn. Someone with the right attitude will want to improve. He also referenced the idea that **A-grade players hire other A-grade players**. Get the quality of your core team right and it can compound through the organisation. **Leadership drives culture, and culture drives performance** Another simple framework from the conversation was: ## Leadership drives culture. Culture drives performance. Culture is easy to talk about and much harder to build. Justin described seeing team members support colleagues who are struggling while also challenging one another and maintaining healthy competition. Eventually, some of that behaviour becomes autonomous. That matters because a strong business can’t depend on the owner or senior manager watching every decision. If you’ve hired good people, established expectations and built trust, the team increasingly regulates itself. For a growing trades or construction company, that’s an important transition. ## Your reputation is part of your marketing RABS operates heavily within local government, where formal tenders and procurement processes are important. That means flashy marketing alone isn’t going to win the work. References matter. A prospective council might speak to another council and ask how the contractor performed. Were they reliable? Did they manage stakeholders? Was the quality right? Did they keep to the programme? Did they manage risk properly? The work you’ve already completed effectively markets you for the next opportunity. Justin also talked about the less formal side of brand building: branded equipment, uniforms, sharing interesting projects and showing the people behind the company. People still want to work with people. For construction businesses, marketing and operations aren’t completely separate. Every interaction can strengthen or weaken the reputation you’re building. ## Play chess, not checkers Justin described his approach to strategy with another simple phrase: **It’s chess, not checkers.** There can be pressure on business leaders to keep making moves. Buy another machine. Enter another market. Add more people. Grow because that’s what successful companies are supposed to do. Justin’s approach is more deliberate. RABS has experienced periods of rapid growth, but he also spoke about deliberately holding position while assessing what the next few years might look like. That isn’t necessarily indecision. Sometimes it is strategy. If you hate making decisions that result in unnecessary losses, you start considering not only the immediate move but what that move creates two or three steps later. The core message from my conversation with Justin is that resilience isn’t simply surviving a bad year. It’s building the people, judgement, reputation and long-term thinking that allow you to keep moving when circumstances change. Read the play. Look after your people. Protect your reputation. And remember that business is often chess, not checkers. **Guest bio** Justin Strunk is Chief Operating Officer of RABS Group, a Melbourne-based road rehabilitation business specialising in asphalt paving and road profiling. RABS works across local government, state road authorities and major construction projects, with Justin bringing extensive industry experience and a strong focus on leadership, operations and developing high-performing teams. - [https://rabsgroup.com.au/](https://rabsgroup.com.au/) - [https://au.linkedin.com/in/justin-strunk-js1](https://au.linkedin.com/in/justin-strunk-js1) Want to be a guest on Built. Trusted. Chosen.? Book here: [https://uplift360.com.au/built-trusted-chosen-podcast-guest-booking/](https://uplift360.com.au/built-trusted-chosen-podcast-guest-booking/)