Meet Clinton: Certificate IV student with Builders Academy

“I enjoy working in construction. I think you’ve gotta like every job you do.” We caught up with Clinton Dias. Clinton is currently doing his Certificate IV in Building and Construction and works as a bill of quantities estimator with Simonds Homes. To find out more about his job, and why he has taken on a Cert IV, scroll through the gallery below. Cheers Clinton!

Name: Clinton Dias
Age: 32
Job title: Bill of quantity estimator.

A bill of quantity estimator calculates the quantity of a product that constitutes a particular house. We work out the quantity of materials for a base build but if a clients wants to change a few things, we help them out with that too. We estimate all the materials and the costs for a full house – the base fittings – and calculate the costs for anything extra. Then the client can choose based on their budget. I’m working for Simonds Homes but my client is all the sales estimators and the production estimators.

We calculate at scale to keeps costs down. If the same client comes to us and says ‘well we’ve got 10 customers wanting an en suite in a particular location we’ll draw up another en suite and put it in as an option for them, and they can choose that. This helps out the estimator on the other end because they do not have to price things every time.

I was living in New Zealand about ten years ago, and I did a diploma course over there. It was a diploma in quantity surveying and it covered everything to do with construction costs and contracts to build a house. But I never got a job in the industry. I came to Australia and starting working as an estimator for a company selling doors.

I’ve been working in commercial construction all this time. So five years in commercial. Then I thought about trying to get into residential. I enjoy working in construction. I think you’ve gotta like every job you do.

The Cert IV has a lot of information and there are people from lots of different backgrounds in the Cert IV. There are many facets of building and construction and the course brings it all together. In the Cert IV course you have guys from all over the place, not just a lot of carpenters, so you learn different things from fellow students.

My main plan is to get a builders license, which is this whole journey: to work with the company, become a site supervisor and in a couple of years with that experience I hope to get a domestic builders license and then try and branch out.

The Cert IV is helping with my work and my work is helping with the Cert IV. Lucky for me is I’m looking at these plans every day. My job is different every day. I’m still learning so much.