It has been an incredible year for DStevens, filled with a range of beautiful projects, exciting improvements, and significant achievements by our team. Peter Stevens, Managing Director of DStevens, took a moment to reflect on the year that was 2019 and looks towards 2020 with anticipation in his annual message to our team. Read his summary to the team below.

Team,

It's hard to believe we're rounding out the end of 2019. This year's been another busy one for the local construction industry with many exciting projects being developed throughout Tairāwhiti. I want to thank you all for your continued passion and commitment to delivering your best work for our clients. It is great to see so many people across the company who are willing to follow their intuition, experiment with new ideas, and share their enthusiasm with everyone. I am so grateful to work with such a talented group of people at DStevens.

You are at the heart of our success as a business. We know that DStevens is at its best when every member of the team feels respected and included. That's why we're committed to fostering a culture of inclusion. Time and again, I've seen that when we work together to achieve our best work, we don't just exceed our own benchmarks, we also lift the standard of the industry. I believe it's our culture that makes it all possible—and I don't take that for granted.

The projects we delivered this year showcase a wide range of the work we are trusted to undertake as a company. Building on our previous work at Lytton High School, we delivered a unique new high-dependency special needs education project with the completion of Rongomaiwhiti alongside a series of smaller projects across the school. We worked on some incredible residential projects too, including Iron House and an extensive renovation of Kōwhai Cottage. And we have been busy with our commercial projects, which included a fit-out for Coates & Associates and the construction of new offices for Eastland Port in the Inner Harbour.

This year, we also continued to focus on implementing our Workshop Transformation Programme, delivering a new look to our Childers Road premises in line with our refreshed branding. It is great to see our refreshed branding being rolled out across the many touchpoints of our business. We have more exciting improvements in the pipeline for 2020 that I hope will lead to a better work environment and help to create even greater efficiencies in our projects.

Over the last two years, we've worked to improve our efforts in health and safety across the company through our partnership with ThinkSafe. This years' SiteWise reassessment benchmarked our company safety planning, processes and protocols against industry best-practice. Our all-time highest score of 88% acknowledges the care that you take in your daily work. I am especially proud of the greater focus we placed on employee wellbeing this year. With new initiatives such as complimentary hearing health checks and access to confidential counselling support for you and your families, we are acting to provide you with a safe and resilient work environment.

We will always seek to extend our efforts to drive innovation and deliver built excellence. That is really what DStevens is all about. It's about leading with actions, not words. It's about showing up for our teammates, our clients and the wider community. It's about accepting nothing less than our very best—then asking ourselves how we can do even better. This is an exciting time for DStevens, fueled by the strength of our growing team working together on projects that look to shape Tairāwhiti for many years to come. Thank you all for doing such inspiring work and congratulations on another incredible year. Here's to more great things to come in 2020.

Happy Holidays,

Peter Stevens
Managing Director