25 Years of Geovert: An Interview with CEO Anthony Teen
Twenty-five years ago, Geovert was founded by two big-wall climbing buddies, Anthony Teen and Josh Green, with a Hilti drill and a garage in Albertown, Wanaka. Today it's a 400-strong business working across Australia, New Zealand, North America, and the Pacific. In our anniversary year, we sat down with founder and CEO Anthony Teen to talk about where the idea came from, what he's learned along the way, and where the business is headed next.
What gap did you see in the market when you started Geovert 25 years ago?
The way I see it, the market had two pieces that hadn't met or weren't combined in a meaningful way. There was expertise in blasting and rock engineering, but what I saw was blasting knowledge that didn't have geological/rock engineering understanding, the most critical piece to understand for blast design. There was expertise in difficult access, and even though industrial rope access was still developing, NZ always had an amazing guiding community and legendary mountaineers. However, no one was combining them to put the right skilled people, safely, exactly where the rockfall risk was, and even the rockfall protection technology itself was still at an early stage of development. That gap was the whole opportunity.
What we brought to it was unusual. Our access experience came from big-wall climbing, multi-day routes on huge vertical granite faces in places like Yosemite and the Karakoram in Pakistan, where you haul everything you need up the wall and sleep in a portaledge, a fold-out hanging bed, bolted to the rock face overnight. That's where you learn to work productively and safely on vertical ground with real consequences. We combined that with our geology, blasting and mining background, and Geovert was the result: a team that could engineer the solution and physically reach the hazard to deliver it. In the very early days a collaborative working partnership with Geobrugg, the world leader in natural hazard protection systems played a key role in developing our offering.
What do you know now that you wish you'd known then?
Integrity and trust are built through delivery, transparency and a willingness to share risk. These are what create long-term relationships. But a well-negotiated contract is what gets you through the bad ones. When things go wrong, the contract comes out. Remember, it isn't for the marriage or the honeymoon; it's for the divorce. So be careful what you sign, because the terms you agree to are the terms that govern how people behave when the relationship is under strain. Never apologise for protecting what you're entitled to by the contract, especially when the people complaining are the same ones who asked you to sign the contract you're now administering.
The other thing people don't understand about building a small business: more often than not, everything you own is tied to the outcome, including the house your family lives in. There is a great deal more on the line than the business.
What are you most proud of, looking back over the past 25 years?
There is so much along the journey to name, but for me it's watching people come here, grow, flourish, make the business their own and build a life out of it.
Just to name a few examples: George Stick and Francis Main, both with us well over a decade. George started on site labouring when he finished school, then kept at it right through his MSc in Geology at the University of Canterbury (UC), and worked his way up to project manager, then went on to run NZ business development. Francis did his Engineering Geology also at UC. After graduating, he started on the tools at Diana Falls in the Haast, building some of the biggest debris-flow attenuators in the world, one of our most challenging projects. The last 80m high ringnet attenuator drape got assembled inside a freezing waterfall. He's now leading pre-contracts for the group.
Mike Burn came out from the UK with a young family. An experienced civil engineer, he was initially employed as Construction Manager for our Australian business, and he landed straight in the middle of one of the hardest contracts we've ever had. He owned it from day one. Fifteen years later he's risen to lead the broader Group as COO, and he's been a huge part of building this company, but more than that, he's the one person who's always had my back when the chips were down. In this industry, that happens more often than you'd think.
General Manager John Baggott is cut from the same cloth, literally, another Geordie from Newcastle, and he's had Mike's back the same way Mike's had mine. He continues to step up, now leading global operations.
It is important to be clear that it is not just the ones who ended up with titles, either. Adam Warren keeps our gear running in conditions that would kill most machines, and he never needed a fancy job description to be one of the most important people we've got. Same with our delivery leadership, Martyn Henderson, Tim Ward, Ikanui Enoka and Jason Wilderink, to name a few, who hold the line on site day in, day out. Honestly, I could go on all day, and the hard part is everyone I'm not naming. The supervisors, the operators, the people who've held sites together for twenty years. They're the company as much as anyone.
What does the next chapter look like?
The next chapter is more reach, built on the same foundations. The Creed and the brand promise don't change, and that matters to me, because they're the reason we're here. The Creed is how we work: as a team, side by side; as innovators, we make it happen; and our culture is to do what's right. That's what delivers our brand promise: "delivering complex engineering solutions in hazardous and challenging environments. Anytime! Anywhere!"
This is our deeply embedded can-do attitude, and it's carried us through 25 years. None of that gets diluted as we grow; if anything, it's what makes the growth possible.
Geographically, the focus is North America. We're continuing to invest in and grow the USA and Canada, which is a major part of where the business is heading. And we're expanding our global mining services to support clients around the world, with highwall stability solutions in large open pits, including depressurisation, drainage and ground support that keep large scale operations safe and productive.
Looking back over the past 25 years, is there anything else you'd like people to know?
Honestly, I think the main thing I'd want on record is that none of this was me. We started as a two-man team, self-proclaimed adventurers, ski bums and big-wall climbing buddies, with some rope access equipment and a Hilti drill in a garage in Albertown, Wanaka, in NZ. We took the jobs nobody else could do, or maybe didn't want, and somehow that turned into a 400-person business with offices across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, and mining projects globally.
That happened because of our people, full stop.
The men and women out there each day in the Geovert overalls, in the wind, sun, rain and snow, scaling and stabilising slopes, maintaining critical assets and figuring out how to safely do the impossible, that's Geovert. We say we work side by side, make it happen and do what's right, and we actually mean it, because you don't survive 25 years of this kind of work any other way.
So to everyone who's put in the hard yards over the years, a massive thank you from me, and a deep debt of gratitude! That's the bit that makes me most proud to be part of this journey.
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