Mr Tony Sukkar

About the speaker

Our speaker today is Mr Tony Sukkar

Tony is the founder, co-owner and Group Managing Director of the Buildcorp Group. He has over 30 years of experience in project and general management in construction and property. In his current role, Tony provides leadership, people development, strategic planning, risk management and governance for the comopany.

He began his career with Lend Lease and Girvan Corporation and in 1990 established Buildcorp. It has become a major force in the construction industry, with over 240 staff generating an annual revenue of over $250 million. Buildcorp has completed projects worth over $3 billion in project value including the upgrade of Terminal 1 in Sydney Airport, the Foxtel head office and the UTS Photomedia and Fabrication Workshop and refurbishment of level 16 in the UTS Tower Building.

Under Tony’s direction, Buildcorp has had a deep involvement in community, arts and sporting organisations. In 2011, he and his wife Josephine established the Buildcorp Rugby Scholarship.

Tony is currently a member on Kambala School Council and since 2011 has been a member of the Building and Estates Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate of the University of Sydney. He holds a Bachelor of Building with Honours from the University of New South Wales.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Mr Tony Sukkar to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Academic Colleagues, special guests, ladies and gentlemen. Graduates.

Thank you for the invitation to deliver the occasional address today.

May I begin by paying my deepest respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and to their elders past and present.

Congratulations to all graduates. It is wonderful that you are able to attend today, to allow us all to celebrate and acknowledge the significant achievement of graduating from a university of the calibre of UTS. This is something valuable which unlike a material possession like a car or a house, it can never be taken away from you. But it comes with a level of expectation; a responsibility to use that knowledge to better yourself, the community and world you live in.

I am honoured to be here at this milestone in your lives, and today I would like to share with you some insights and lessons learnt from over 30 years in the construction industry, and from life in general.

I am one of 8 children; my parents migrated from Lebanon to Australia in the mid 1950’s. In 1970 when I was in Year 6 I was sent to boarding school in Lebanon.

In 1975, the Lebanese Civil War broke out and my education was stopped in its tracks. I missed a year of school due to the War, as I was still in Lebanon but it was unsafe to attend school. I returned to Australia at the end of 1975, I commenced Year 11 the following year and then was able to complete my HSC.

Uncertain about how to move forward with a tertiary education, and having no one in my family before me who had graduated university, I thought that the future lay in computers. So I began an electrical engineering degree. After 6 weeks I realised that it was not meant for me, so withdrew from the course, and worked for a year as I tried to figure out what I might be.

In that year, I returned to one of my great passions, rugby union. I also laboured on building sites, while contemplating opportunities for moving forward. I finally decided that my career path would be in construction and enrolled in a building degree.

My father and older brothers were builders. They couldn’t understand why I would need to go to university to become a builder, as they were building and developing and they didn’t have any formal tertiary qualifications themselves. That took some convincing and what made things even worse was when I graduated, I decided not to work with them in the family business. Rather, I commenced my working career at Civil and Civic, which was a subsidiary of Lend Lease at the time. Their reaction? “Tony why do you need to work for someone else? Come and work with us!!!”

After working with Civil and Civic for 4 years I moved to another listed construction company called Girvan Group. I was the Project Manager on an $85m project in Chatswood, however in January 1990, Girvan was placed into receivership. The project contract was terminated at the end of January 1990 and within 3 days I had negotiated a contract for the completion of the last $47m on the project.

This marked the commencement of Buildcorp, which has remained my wife’s and my business to this day. We now have a turnover of $250m and employ 240 staff.

So how did a degree equip me to make the step from a new construction graduate, to the running of a business the size of Buildcorp?

•  I learnt to think critically

• I was taught technical skills such as planning and programming

• I was instructed in basic business management skills

• I was given the opportunity for industry experience before I received my degree (which UTS do particularly well)And many other important skills…

So what have I learnt along this journey, and more importantly what can I share with you?

• Once you have had an opportunity to experience a few years in the industry, consider what you really enjoyed, because they were probably your strengths. 
  • “Make your obsession your profession and you’ll never work a day”. I don’t know who first coined this phrase, but this is how I feel about my work.

• Set your personal objectives and have them drive your career path.
  • My objective was to establish and run my own construction business by the time I was 30, so from the time I had graduated, I worked towards gaining sufficient industry experience to equip me to do so
  • I regularly set and reviewed my objectives, and built “stretch” into them each time

• Work hard and back yourself
  • ​That takes persistence, passion and courage. In the absence of these, all else fail.

• Be adaptable
  • “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” – Charles Darwin
  • “Change is the only constant in life.” - Heraclitus
  • For years we have been told that we need to accept change to grow. The roles you may end up in may not have been invented yet.
  • Often this can lead to the most wonderful opportunities that you might never have imagined.
    • For example, an employee at Buildcorp who worked as a contracts administrator found he really enjoyed the contractual and legal side of construction. He asked if we would consider sponsoring him through a law degree. He remained with us 4 days a week, while studying part-time. He has since established his own practice, and he and his team now provide Buildcorp with legal counsel.

• Be a good team player
  • The more senior you become in your role, the more people you will have reporting to you.
  • Your technical skills will become less important than your team building and leadership skills
  • I honed those skills playing a team sport – rugby. Team sport taught me how to work towards a common goal when you had a group of very different individuals, who all had to combine and collaborate to successfully achieve an outcome. In sport it might have been a premiership. In construction it is the successful delivery of a project. You need to be good with people and a good team player.

• "For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required." – Luke 12:48
  • You have been afforded a wonderful degree. If you work hard and apply what you have learnt you will have a terrific life.
  • Make sure you look to the community around you and give back in a meaningful, appropriate way
  • At Buildcorp, we have established a charitable foundation, where all of our staff have the opportunity to contribute their time, talent, dollars or influence to make a difference to the communities we live in. This year autism has been the beneficiary of tens of thousands of dollars from the foundation.
  • Your personal and professional values underpin EVERYTHING you do. Be guided by them – always return to them when unsure of a decision.

You have been educated in the Lucky Country and you are among a privileged few to now have a university degree. Use it well, and congratulations on this significant achievement. I look forward to reading about your many successes in the years to come.