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
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