SIX years ago, Gareth Leslie “Gaz” Holgate was one of the members of the Philippine Volcanoes that took the sports world by storm with their sterling performances in the Asian 5 Nations tournaments since its inception in 2008.
Since then—just like the restive phase that follows after any volcanic eruption—nothing much has been heard about the Filipino-British international rugby union player and the rest of his group, as they shied away from the limelight over the past few years.
But not until today, when “The Silent Volcano”, the monicker he is known for, is making his presence felt again—this time in the real-estate industry.
“I stopped playing about five years ago,” he told the BusinessMirror about his decision to call it quits from playing rugby professionally.
“But the actual transition was fine. I think I transitioned well out of playing [rugby] to another aspect of my professional life,” he shared.
Life’s a ball game
THE real-estate industry was nothing new to Holgate when he decided in 2012 that it would be the source of his bread and butter, while engaging himself to his favorite sports on the side.
Thanks to architectural design and technology educational and professional backgrounds he gained in the United Kingdom that he has had an easy fallback to throw his hat again to the property sector.
“It wasn’t like all of a sudden I stopped, and then I started to work,” he recalled. “It was perfect timing because SDW had just started back then.”
Holgate was one of those who established SDW Construction brand, under SDW Realty & Development Inc.
The group started as a general works contractor, primarily supplying the needs of its affiliates: HMR Philippines Inc., HMR Auction Services Inc., HMR Envirocycle Philippines Inc., CNC BPO Solutions, Fair Dinkum Fabricators Inc., HMR Solutions and HMRSOS.
“When we first started, it’s hard because, in construction, no one would give you projects if you don’t have a portfolio,” he narrated.
Through their partnership with SM, fortunately, SDW was given the chance to design and build one of the outlets of SM Hypermarket.
“It’s our first project and then we started building momentum. So projects were coming in. That’s when we decided to incorporate outside of HMR Philippines,” he said, while noting that the SDW Construction has remained an HMR subsidiary since its registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 21, 2012.
Currently, the firm works as an integrated design and build general contractor, delivering a wide array of projects, from public infrastructure, leisure and commercial buildings, office and workplaces to restaurants and cafes.
“The business has been ongoing. Obviously, we are coming on our fifth year now,” said Holgate, who serves as CEO and design principal of SDW Realty & Development Inc.
Formative years
BASED in Manila, SDW is a fairly new company. It has a multinational client base with projects spread across the Philippines.
With its current stature, the firm offers multidisciplined construction services for projects with specialties in commercial workspace planning and builds.
According to the top executive, they have project capabilities and experience to deliver from initial concept and inception, through to final commissioning and turnover.
Serving clients here and abroad, he said they provide advice, expertise and turn-key solutions to their commercial office design and fit-out requirements.
He added they offer an established design and build solution apart from traditional construction activities, a wide range of facility management solutions as value added service to clients, as well as general warehousing through to specialist storage across all verticals.
SDW’s specialties are in education (school refurbishments, extensions and classroom blocks), residential (high-end luxury houses and social housing, either condominiums or refurbishments), commercial (offices. restaurants, cafés and commissaries) and retail (new build flagship headquarters and retail stores).
Since design and build are a mixture of functionality, price and aesthetics, the company always incorporates these factors in all of their projects.
“We want to make sure we’re bringing value to our clients,” Holgate said, adding that they also bring the so-called hospitality approach to construction. “We guarantee that the end-users will feel the entire construction as a nice journey.”
Being transparent and dependable all the time are the driving factors for SDW to win the hearts of prospective clients.
“We’re fortunate enough to be bidding for a lot of projects and being successful,” he said, while disclosing they already have done hundreds of projects over the last five years, of which 18 are ongoing.
Fair, hands-on leader
WHAT started from just having six staff members and a labor group of 50 people in 2012, SDW has grown to employ 70 people comprising the administration team and a manpower of 700 workers stationed to various projects.
Managing such a medium-scale entity, indeed, is no easy task for the CEO and principal designer being on top of the company’s organizational structure. He’s aware, though, that he needs to fulfill his roles to comanage the operations and business development while ensuring revenue growth of the firm.
In doing so, Holgate boasts of an unconventional way of leading the SDW. He said: “We don’t want to be this stiff stereotypical construction type of company. We imbibe what we call is the ‘sexy contractor.’ So we’re trying to bring this fresh, innovative approach in terms of project, and also to our management style.”
Parity is achieved with an open-door policy that applies to everybody. So there are no boundaries that separate upper management from rank and file employees.
“I’m fairly hands on. I take a lot of views in terms of the design aspect of our projects,” he enthused. “So everyone should have a voice.”
Because construction in the Philippines is complicated, the top executive cited that it needs careful strategy, especially when hiring and handling competent people to deliver projects on time.
“I think planning is really important. That’s why we try to be really hands on in terms of our approach to our staff to really help them out,” Holgate stressed.
Robust business
WHILE relatively new in the business, SDW has managed to double its annual revenue over the last four years while riding the industry’s growth.
Buoyed by the country’s improving economy over the years, the firm’s CEO and design principal cited the continuous development across all property sectors, such as office, residential, retail, industrial and hospitality markets bodes well for the design and construction sectors.
“Obviously, design and construction industries are booming here. There’s so much construction going on in terms of every form, whether it is office, roads, bridges, ground up condominiums, and then a lot of fit-outs. So obviously, the more structures build up, the more exterior and interior designs are required,” he pointed out.
Such strong demand is beneficial to market players like SDW as evident in its improved financial performance. In fact, the company’s gross revenue reached P195 million last year.
Of the total topline, 80 percent came from fit-outs, four-fifth of which was accounted for by commercial offices, and the rest by restaurants and apartments.
“A lot of our current projects are call enters or BPOs [business-process outsourcing]. We’re building offices with companies that have over 10,000 employees,” he cited, owing it to constant growth momentum of the information technology-BPO sector in the country.
Under the 2022 road map of the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines or Ibpap, this industry is seen to generate revenues of $38.9 billion by end-2022, from a six-year revenue of $25 billion until 2016.
Meanwhile, ground ups or infrastructure projects, including townhouses and road networks, among others, contributed 20 percent to the company’s overall revenue in 2016.
“We’re forecasting this year to finish around a half billion mark [P500 million],” Holgate revealed their triple revenue growth target this year.
Positive outlook
UPBEAT on the massive government infrastructure projects in line with President Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” initiative, the SDW’s chief bared that they plan to focus more on the ground up, civil and infrastructure works since they’ve already secured core competence in the fit-out segments.
“That’s our next three- or five-year goals,” Holgate said of their future endeavors. “We want to get a piece of that pie in terms of projects.”
At the moment, a lot of SDW projects are subcontracted by major conglomerates. In terms of fit-outs, the firm started doing public-private partnership (PPP) projects in 2014, when it designed and built the corporate offices of the AF Payments Inc.—a consortium between the Ayala Corp. and the Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC)—that provides contactless payment-solution beep card.
This was followed by the head office of the Light Rail Manila Corp.—a joint venture among Ayala’s AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp., MPIC Light Rail Corp. and Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings (Philippines) Pte. Ltd.
“It has been a very good experience. And then now we’re pushing toward our infra ground up PPPs.”
The top executive was referring to the ongoing expansion of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport by the GMR-Megawide Consortium.
“So we’re doing a lot of construction works for them. We do the finishing for the inside. We’re also trying to push our structural works. I think we’re trying to go both sides,” he said.
Also under way is the construction of the slope protection in Bataan, which SDW subcontracts from San Miguel Corp.
While the firm sets further its sights on PPP projects, Holgate clarified that they’re not negotiating with the government for these initiatives.
“When I say negotiating, it’s actually bidding. But it’s just initial discussion about capabilities,” he reiterated. Seeing developments on the manufacturing sector, the CEO and design principal said the company is keen on doing its own development projects.
“So we would either acquire properties or do joint ventures with land owners, and then, perhaps, build these residential developments for a lot of these manufacturers,” he said.
For this initiative, he cited that SDW already has a landbank of a couple of properties—the 7-hectare estate in Silangan, Cavite, and a couple of acres in Cainta, Rizal.
“With manufacturing that is growing up, a lot of people will have jobs. Part of the bargaining agreements with unions is to provide socio and economic housings for these people.