Plumbing Africa November 2018 | Page 52

50 FEATURES 40 years is just the beginning It all started way back in 1978, in a small back room of Chris Burgess’s father’s house. Burgess had just returned from a year of travelling overseas and, unsure of what to do next, founded a small plumbing business that this year celebrates a truly significant 40 years in the plumbing industry. By Warren Robertson “I came back with no money, so I started working with a guy I used to work with before I went overseas. He had a truck, which I could not afford, and so we ran around in that until, about three months later, I was able to get one on hire purchase,” Burgess says. 1979 By 1981 they were ready to move out and get a place of their own, and so the first offices of Chris Burgess and Co were located on the corner of Townsend and Van Buuren roads, in Bedfordview. “Initially, in 1978, our goal was to undertake any type of plumbing that came along, specialising in construction and civils plumbing; that is, shopping centres, stadiums, office blocks, factories, housing developments, and corporate / industrial / domestic maintenance plumbing,” says Burgess, explaining that it took roughly six months before larger contracts such as the Boksburg Athletics stadium and re-piping the northern sewerage purification works came in. November 2018 Volume 24 I Number 9 “I remember buying from a company called Jack Hobson — they were a plumbing supplier near Ellis Park Stadium. I remember going in there and I had to pay my first R10 000 for material. I was shaking signing the cheque,” he says, “That was so much money in those days.” Despite the larger contracts, much of the 1980s had been a struggle. Unscrupulous builders, who insisted on paying the contract plumbers last, made cash flow a problem. “One of the defining moments was when in 1990, we were doing the plumbing for Doornkop military www.plumbingafrica.co.za