Jimmy Wilkins

I was working as an exploration driller in the mines and had moved my family to Emerald. When that contract ended we liked the area and didn't want to move, so I put a post online looking for work. Ian Payne, GeoRadar's original founder, reached out - he was an oil and gas driller from back in the day, so we hit it off from the start. I started the following week, and here we are, eleven years later.

After about three years I'd stepped up into management, and our family wanted to get back to Bundaberg, which was home. Ian was due for retirement, so we made a plan together: I took on half the company and moved it to Bundaberg, and over time took on the whole thing as Ian transitioned out. He'd let me trip, but he wouldn't let me fall - he taught me a lot, and it let the company grow with new technology at the same time.

For the first six to twelve months I did every job on my own. I'd locate services in the ute, come back and grab the truck to dig the potholes, then come back with the trailer and fill them in. I was the cable locator, the vac truck operator and the backfill crew. It means I can say I've done every role in this company - and the guys know I'm happy to get in and get dirty too.

Unfortunately, I'm going to tell you it's zero. Three weeks ago I was on a site where a water line was five centimetres under the soil. I've seen fibre optic cables that cost over $100,000 to repair lying near the surface. Assets are supposed to be buried to standard, but time and time again we find they're not. It's a very small cost for such an expensive piece of advice - and it might save someone's life.

We're the one stop shop: you get the locating, the potholing and the backfilling, and we leave the site in a better state than we found it. Someone once told me to always under promise and overachieve. We won't tell people we can do something if we can't - we lay it all on the line first. And we present well: modern equipment, a well-kept fleet, and you could eat your dinner off the floor of our trucks, even though the guys work in mud all day.

Bundaberg is the main branch, with Rockhampton employing four locals and our original branch in Emerald - I bought that property recently, so we're there to stay. Our general area runs from the Sunshine Coast and Gympie up to Mackay, and west to the Northern Territory border. But there's no limit - one of our operators was at Phosphate Hill near Mount Isa last week. If the client needs us there, we'll travel.

Steady growth. We've gone from a three-man show to fifteen or sixteen employees, and I don't want to lose sight of what we've got - too many companies take on more work than they can handle and the quality slips. I'd love to see a GeoRadar branch in every town across Australia one day. But the core value is simple: maintain the standard of service we provide, and if we ever see it slipping, rein it in and get back to where we were.