Veros turns 10 - From the start | Property | Development Management

As we celebrate ten years, it only seemed fitting to catch up with Duarne Lankshear, co-founder of Veros, to reflect on the early days of the business, its growth and evolution, milestone projects and the values and culture that have been at the foundation for the last decade.

Q: Taking it right back to the beginning, how did Veros come about?

Duarne: I had been working different projects around town and worked with this guy Peter Williams several times. Landowners were asking for help with their development projects and we both recognised an opportunity for a property business with its cornerstone in development management.

As co-founder, Pete was the driver behind the concept of Veros, he had a massive vision and clarity of what the business could be, me well I just wanted to get stuck into projects. Pete was the black and white and straight lines, and I’m a bit more colour – we make a good team. Our different approaches to business and contrasting personalities have provided the momentum to take these two guys to a team of 34 talented people in the space of 10 years. In between all that, of course, is over $500m of vertical projects and $300m of land development projects and a whole bunch of happy clients. There’s a lot to be proud of.

Q: The company grew fairly quickly in just a few years?

Duarne: Yes, core members of our team joined us very early on and have helped make Veros what it is today. Michelle Schuler was our first employee back in 2012 and has been keeping us in line ever since. Michael Kemeys has also been with us from the early days, he’s brilliant with such a blended skillset across urban design, engineering, and surveying.

Morgan Jones, I think, was our fifth employee. He worked with us for one year and then briefly left to drive the city transformation and property team at Tauranga City Council. After he left, I kept bugging him to come back, eventually, he did and has led our company ever since. He is super smart and has shown great leadership not just for the business but for our property advisory services too.

Q: Why the Bay of Plenty and Waikato?

Duarne: Tauranga is home for me, and after working in Auckland for several years on successful apartment developments, I moved back in 2007, as this was where I wanted to raise my family.

Tauranga was also part of a young and maturing region of New Zealand, and still is, with plenty of opportunity and lots of urbanisation required. We could see many ways to add value and shape this city for the better.

We found Tauranga to be a great hub from which to service other regions, as we first expanded into Hamilton and Rotorua, and now we are helping deliver projects across the country. Working on projects across provincial NZ is what we do best, and we stick to what we know – steering clear of major centres like Auckland that have too many crocodiles and sharks.

Recognising the potential, in 2015 we moved into the Waikato, setting up our office in the city. The Waikato is to become an economic powerhouse with its roading, education and sport infrastructure, and its proximity to Auckland. We will continue to see it grow and are excited to be part of it.

Rotorua has always been a key part of Veros, from the very start, thanks to a joint venture with a great mate, Ross Parker. And it remains a big part of our business today led by Paul Spurdle, especially in project management, it’s great to be a part of the city’s revitalisation.

Q: What does Veros mean?

Duarne: Veros is derivative of vero in latin, which translates as true or real. This is what Veros is all about. The foundation of our business is honesty and trust, we provide our clients with solid, commercial advice to ensure all projects start how they want to finish.

We are about making things real, and this sometimes means stopping if it doesn’t make sense to continue. We don’t want clients to waste their resources and as much as we want to start a project we equally will turn a project off it doesn’t make sense to continue.

Q: You were originally Veros Property Partners – why partners?

Duarne: We partner with our clients. In every project we spend clients’ money like it’s our own, we view a project through their eyes, we walk a project in their shoes, and we look after a project as if it’s our own. Backed by our commercial experience, we have a long track record of successful projects, not just for the private sector but for corporates, local and central government.

We have shortened our name to Veros as we have grown but partnering remains an important part of our approach.

Q: One of the core company values is ‘one team’. People at Veros love what they do, and you get a sense that it’s been that way from the start?

Duarne: Yes, the backbone of our business is great people. Veros has evolved over the years, and we are currently one of the biggest land subdividers in the country for clients. We are now having a huge influence on urbanisation, creating neighbourhoods and communities, and we are proud of what we do. We are good at navigating a very complex property industry and we do all of this with great people. Our people have a wide range of skills, that all blend and leverage off each other to help make projects real.

With a focus on people, what about the culture at Veros?

As a business, we are family first. We don’t watch clocks or count warm bums on seats. For us, it’s absolutely about coaching your kids’ sports teams, going on school camps and being there to drop-off and pick-up the kids from school. It’s about being a parent, we trust our team will get the work done, like the All Blacks we have a “no dickheads” policy and it’s always worked really well for us.

Q: With a track record of successful projects, what projects would you consider milestones for the business?

Duarne: One of our first projects was the Westpac Centre, with John Meldrum and Yu-Shan Holdings, working as the development managers and then the Harvey Norman Centre, now known as Cameron Central. We are still part of these buildings and working with these clients today, with our Asset Management team managing both buildings. A great example of the turnkey service we offer, supporting our clients from early concept through to completion.

Supporting and iconic Hamilton brand, Hill Laboratories into a new purpose-built headquarters in Hamilton was also rewarding.

We are extremely proud of our work helping to deliver Latitude Residences. On what as a difficult project with a great client, there were many hurdles with getting consent, but we ultimately delivered a great urban outcome for Tauranga which is now a benchmark project for the city.

Wooing Tree Estate is a great example of the work we are doing across the regions. With good quality urbanisation in a provincial town, we are delivering a neighbourhood with mixed use and a broad range of housing typologies and section sizes in a high-quality streetscapes.

Hill Laboratories Veros Property Advisory 2 — Hill Laboratories, Hamilton

Hill Laboratories Veros Property Advisory — Hill Laboratories, Hamilton

Q: With Covid the last few years have been challenging for all businesses, but what other challenges are we facing in the industry today?

Duarne: The property industry is extremely complex now due to legislation, resource management and policy, navigating good outcomes is time consuming and expensive and compromised with far too many consultants. With our experience and good people, Veros shines a light on what is at times a challenging and tough business landscape. We are really good at getting projects going and setting strong direction of travel. We concentrate our expertise on the parts of the project lifecycle that have the biggest impact on project outcomes. The past year and a half dealing with cost inflation and procurement has been a real challenge.

Q: What’s next for Veros?

Duarne: From our beginnings in development management, over the years we have evolved, adding our service offerings as we grew, with property advisory and project management. We set ourselves up to be a turnkey service with long-term asset management. And with our latest addition of strategic advisory, we cover the full life cycle of a property project.

Going forward we want to continue all the great work that we’ve been doing, with our focus on leading the great task ahead of New Zealand, which is to develop in and around our city centres and to build up, with vertical developments of apartments and townhouses – we want to lead this space.