While exploring his journey, we will learn how Kelly’s natural sense of curiosity led to him becoming an engineer, which benefits him in the world of property development. As well as this, he will detail his memorable trip to India which has had lasting effects on his life.

Timestamps:
1:10 | Understanding the World
6:05 | Today’s Focus
7:20 | Where it All Began
15:43 | Entering the Professional World
22:37 | Travelling to India

Resources and Links:

[34:00] It was a very humbling experience and quite a curious thing but it just kind of enamoured, I think my love for travel and experiences with other cultures and through those experiences you can learn so much about yourself.

 

This is Property Investory where we talk to successful property investors to find out more about their stories, mindset and strategies.

 

I’m Tyrone Shum and in this episode, we’re joined by the owner of Propdeveloper, David Kelly. We will learn how his natural sense of curiosity led to him becoming a successful engineer, which benefits him in the world of property development. As well as this, Kelly will detail his memorable trip to India which has had lasting effects on his life and property.

 

 

Kelly has always had a natural curiosity about how the world works. This curiosity led him down a path with lots of twists and turns…

 

[0:43] My background is really from grassroots construction. I.e., I did, I went after high school I went to university and studied civil engineering in Melbourne at Swinburne Institute. And following that, I actually wanted to really understand what it was like to build stuff because I was always aligned much more to the structural side of engineering rather than the civil side — you know, pipes and roads and things.

 

[1:08] I like seeing things go up vertically. And so, I went off and I started doing some labouring work. I then went and did a full carpentry apprenticeship. So, I had this kind of unusual set of skills, where I had a Bachelor of Civil Engineering with a bit of experience. And then I went back and had no background and I got indentured as a carpenter and did that. And then I went on and became a builder and used that in various capacities.

 

[1:35] I then moved up from Melbourne up to the Gold Coast or to Brisbane [and I] was managing a business there. And then [I] got back into engineering, where we were designing steel frame buildings and then from there, I went on to become an engineer for a foundation engineering company. So, they were doing piling systems and I started a business because I always knew I could make it as a contractor. And so, I started a foundation engineering company, and it was using screw piles.

 

This technology was still new in the 90s and Kelly found this to be an advantage.

 

[2:22] It was very, very useful because we could come in and put piles down from anywhere between, you know, two metres and 15 metres, quite comfortably and affordably for the contractor.

 

[2:34] But because it was an emerging technology and the thing is, I always used to say to people, 'if you've got a problem with your foundations, you've got to actually fix it properly. Or else it's going to come back and always be in trouble'. So, because it was emerging, there was a reluctance to take that on completely. The price comparison to say drill piles was always very advantageous for screw piles because it was a cheaper method [and] faster method. But there were concerns about doing real, you know, bigger projects [such as] infrastructure type projects because they thought this is just some new idea, which really hasn't got a good engineering basis to it.

 

[3:05] So, that's where I really shone because I was able to incorporate my structural engineering understanding and give presentations and whether that be technical or whether that being conferences and things, talking about the merits of screw piles. And I always would say that 'hey, these are limited in what they can do but in a field where they operate and can be justified, then they're very good'.

 

So, that experience, that 10 years, we did 1000 projects all over Australia. But I also did projects in New Zealand — infrastructure type projects. I did projects in Singapore, Malaysia and then I did, then I participated in the largest joint venture project which had ever occurred in China at the time, which was a petrochemical plant east of Shenzhen, just over the Chinese border.

 

This deal in China was a $4.5 billion project and Kelly played an important role in designing a foundation system.

 

[4:00] We had the big heavy hitters in there. There was Bechtel Foster Wheeler, where the project managers were a shell China National offshore oil Corp. So, it really was probably the highlight of my career in that field because you were introducing an emerging technology which had never been used apparently in China at that time.

 

[4:19] And so, I had to be able to stump up with and be able to, from an engineering design point of view, justify what we were doing. And then also be able to get that done in real time and, you know, using the available resources and things we had there of labour and materials. So, I found it was probably the highlight of my career there. And I came back [and] I had a couple more years in the business [and] then I decided to sell the business and I got out of that and had a brief go at investment banking.

 

[4:52] I travelled around the world for a couple of years doing that and that was a buzz, that was good. I like the idea of leverage and I like the idea of leveraging money. And so, that was a terrific experience, we came as a real gutser actually. Like you're riding a motorbike flat out and then you render the back of a bus and that's what happened to us.

 

[5:09] We just got wiped out by the GFC, way back then. Then I went back into traditional piling, engineering design, etc. And then from there, I went on to property development, really accumulating, like putting all those skills together as a property developer of my own projects. And then for Toyota Australia I was probably their main consultant for property development in Australia for 10 years. And that was a great experience, doing different projects.

 

All of this experience has built up to Kelly becoming a very successful property developer and this is where his focus lies.

[5:55] At the moment, I've been doing a couple of things. I'm refinancing some properties I have in Brisbane to pull out some equity and do another active property development. So, a little bit of time in that sort of realm. I'm also managing seven medium sized construction projects and rectification projects on high rise buildings here on the Gold Coast.

 

[6:16] So, a whole smattering of clients and also different experiences where probably, I'm doing one project on the largest building in Surfers Paradise. So, I'm finding that it's a great, it's an interesting field. You're doing the same sort of work that you would do in normal construction but you're getting a lot of love.

 

[6:37] Getting love from body corporate, getting love from their building managers. Which is something that often doesn't happen in our trade at all. You're getting, often you're getting booted from dusk to dawn and it's an interesting opportunity to be able to perform well, do a decent job but then get lots of feedback and lots of positive feedback from all these different stakeholders.

 

 

It has taken a lot of hard work for Kelly to build his success. Let’s take a look at where it all began.

 

[7:37] I grew up in country [in] New South Wales, in a small place called Corowa. It was a population of about 3000 people then and it's about 6000 people now 40 years later. So, it hasn't grown a lot. But, you know, grassroots town. Football and cricket were the only things that really existed throughout the year and we're always outside playing sports of one sort or another.

 

From a young age, Kelly always displayed his sense of curiosity.

 

[13:04] I summarise it as just wanting to understand how the world worked and how things worked. You know whether that be buildings or cars or motors or whatever. And my mum used to say that just as a two year old, I would grab a knife and I would, we had a kitchen table, our dining table had this beading running around it and it had screws in at certain distances. Foot centres I guess, or something.

 

[12:55] And somehow, I'd worked out that let's undo that thing. So, completely unprompted as a two year old, here I am with a makeshift screwdriver, a bread and butter knife, undoing this beading and they came in and the things like half undone. My dad probably looked at and thought, oh my God, what am I going to do now? Because he, I'm not sure he would have known how to put it back. With all due respect to dad, he just wasn't like, you know, that wasn't his thing.

This trait of curiosity and innovation continued into Kelly’s teenage years…

 

[14:43] In my year 10 at school, I did metalwork. And part of metalwork was that you had to do a project. And so, I came up with this idea and the teacher said, at the start of the year he said, 'these are the things that people have made in the past'.

 

[15:05] And there were things like a metal toolbox which was all folded up and whatever or I don't know, just have a little trinkets and things. And I said to him, 'hey, how about, I've got an idea’. I found these plans somehow. I think I'd wrote away to some magazine and I got these plans delivered from America of a go kart. And so, I said, 'I want to build a go kart'. And I showed him the plans and he was there, almost having kittens.

 

[15:32] He's thinking hallelujah. At last, I've got a real project for one of these kids and it was such a buzz to do that. And we stuck a, what I did, I bought a go kart from somewhere that had proper go kart wheels on it and the steering system. And then we literally bent using a pipe bender, a frame up to suit these plans which was like the traditional when you see racing go karts now. But the thing is, we made it out of like heavy as hell pipe. So, the thing was heavy, and we welded it up and got it all going, you know, put the wheels on it. I put a victor motor mower engine on it, and we had it's just a drive system rigged up.

 

[16:15] And I remember, it got to the crescendo which, and I'm looking at all my mates in the class and they've got like a little hammer that they've spent all year building or a little toolbox over here. And here's Dave with this go kart. And I completely captured the imagination of the teacher, just through that process. And it was very enthusiastic and all that. Anyway, I remember we got to the point where it was time to give it the trial out in the yard in the carpark and we took it out and the mount for the petrol tank. So, it was the petrol tank off the mower, and it was sitting up high. And it had a little just like [a] mild steel framework to support it. And one of those broke and so the tank was flapping around. So, it's a bit dangerous.

 

[16:58] So, he said, 'quick we're going to take it back in and weld it up'. I think it was on the last day of the term or something. It was some sort of time pressure. So, we took it back into the workshop and he was so enthusiastic he just flips it up, flicks the whole go kart on its side. And he gets the electric arc welder, and he starts welding this thing. And I was there holding it with a welding mask, and I was looking at the side of my welding mask and the fuel from the fuel tank, it started dripping on the floor of the workshop.

 

[17:33] One of the sparks ignited and so there's a pool, there's a fire going on. And I'm here elbowing him, and he realised that and have to put the fire out. And it was just all the enthusiasm of trying to finish this project in time and it was, maybe it was a bit of a near miss as well.

 

High School was also the time that Kelly decided he wanted to become an engineer.

 

[7:59] My next door neighbour was a; he was a carpenter for his whole life. And he was just a great guy. [He was] very hands on and [I] would always, I'd be over there, [I'm a] very inquisitive guy and still am very inquisitive person, trying to just understand how things work and particularly trying to understand how things were built and how you unbilled things, how you demolish things and actually understand how to put them back together.

 

[8:26] And that's what I found was my love of structural engineering and architecture, to really just admire that you can, at the end of the day, one of the most satisfying things I found as a carpenter was that at the end of the day, you could stand back and see that you'd actually created something real that once it was filled and painted and finished, it was going to sit there for maybe 30 or 40 or 50 years. And now there's a definite satisfaction with that.

 

[9:02] And then I had my, from my mom's side, my uncle and my first cousin were both civil engineers. And I guess my mum and dad weren't quite sure how to guide someone, in those days in a small country town like that there wasn't much career guidance because it was just, you know, it's just where we're up to with the development of careers, I guess.

 

[9:27] And so, I just, I went and did a couple of weeks or maybe one week’s work experience with my uncle, who was working for the Melbourne water board. And I saw great, big, huge plotting machines and engineers and architects looking very studious and smart and developing plans and everything else. And I thought, that looks like a pretty cool career.

 

At 17 years old, Kelly left home to pursue his dream career.

 

[10:05] [I] move to the big smoke three hours south of Corowa. And we, the reason, I think as much as being interested and a very curious sort of person, I also have noticed that I can have a quite short attention span. And when I looked at, I was offered a place in a couple of different universities which were straight four yearlong courses and that sounded like absolute murder to me.

 

[10:38] At Swinburne, they had what's called a sandwich course. Which is when you make a sandwich, you get a piece of bread and a piece of bread and then something in the middle. Well, in this course of civil engineering, we did two years full time and then you had like a sandwich, you had work, study, work, study. And so, it was a four and a half year course but within that four and a half years, we came out with a year of work experience in industry.

 

[11:04] And I thought that's gonna just break it up for me and I need that work experience to be able to be sure that, to know that what I was studying was actually going to be something that would interest me for a long time. So, the sandwich course really worked for me.

 

As Kelly lived in New South Wales, why did he decide to go to university in Victoria?

 

[12:08] We live, Corowa is on the Murray River. So, it's on the border. So, as the crow flies, it's about a, now it's about a three hour drive to Melbourne. Whereas it's a six hour drive to Sydney. And my mum was, my dad was from that town. My mum was from Melbourne. So, we would always be going to Melbourne catching up with cousins and the cousin and Uncle I mentioned. So, I was much very familiar with Melbourne whereas really, I'd only been to Sydney once or twice. So, it made more sense to go across the border and go to Victoria.

 

Evidently, Kelly worked hard at school and university. This carried through to his professional life, which started at a young age.

 

[18:32] I worked as a kid doing a paper round. Which was like a 5am start as a 12 year old, that was pretty brutal. And we get cold winters down there. I remember riding the paper round in a balaclava which my mum had knitted with a little eye pocket here, but the thing would get so wet because you'd [be] riding through this mist, and it would drape down and so my whole face is getting cold. And then you get to the paper shop, take all that stuff off outside, leave it there, come back and the whole mask was frozen.

 

[19:08] Just from the amount of moisture in there. So, with that, I mean there’s colder situations where people go through and stuff but that was one of the things I remembered and it wasn't that pleasant. So, I got out of that job, and I became, I did work at Woolworths as a fruit and veggie guy there. And doing that sort of stuff. In my uni holidays, I worked as a builder's labour with a bricklayer and I did a couple of other university type jobs.

 

[19:36] We used to, that's a big wheat sheet area. So, every year there's a big harvest of wheat. And in those days I used to work on the wheat silos, receiving the grain from farmers. They'd come in and we would have to receive that and document it etc. And then just keep an eye on the truck with discharging it into the right spot. So, things like that but it was just a good country, honest, honest people and honest experiences where you're doing hard work.

 

After completing his university degree, Kelly got his first engineering job and his career really took off.

[21:40] I went out, I got a job as a structural engineer for a small engineering company. And we were designing a lot of tilt panel buildings and factory buildings and commercial stuff, not residential but commercial in Melbourne. Yeah, so, I did that for a while, then I went on a trip to India, my first overseas trip. And when I came back from that, I really took off with the carpentry and building and more, a bit more labouring but I was working with a guy who had a handyman repair business.

 

[22:12] And we were doing all sorts of different jobs. New jobs and fixing up this, that and the other. And a lot of timber frame buildings in Melbourne and houses. So, we'd be restumping houses, repairing anything from wind jammed windows, to new doors, to insulating houses. So, ripping off all the weatherboards, insulating it, re whether boarding it, building a couple of new houses with builders. All sorts of just all good hands-on experiences.

 

[22:41] And I felt that was really serving that kind of desire to understand because the best way of understanding how things are built is to build it and to build it from the grassroots. And I found that as a builder that that experience, really, I think qualified me to really understand how the processes worked and the different trades — what their responsibilities were and how it all went together. You know, I've always had the opinion that the best qualified tradesmen to be a builder is the carpenter because they see all the different processes and normally, they're the leading.

 

[23:45] And I feel that even as a development manager myself, managing projects for Toyota for example. You know, bigger projects and things where you've got really organised professional subcontractors working on jobs, you can have residential work, you can get a whole range of different professionalism from different trades. But generally, in commercial work, you're getting guys who are better organised, they're running bigger accounts, they're used to acting in a more professional way.

 

[24:17] And I know that I feel that it's very, very unlikely that anyone's going to be BS me on a project because I've had sufficient experience to know what the trade and what the end result is and how you get from where you are to that end result in terms of construction methodology in terms of those specific trades. And if I don't, so, I know the way to navigate that path.

 

[24:40] But also, I know what questions to ask to get the answers. And I find that as a development manager, and even the projects I'm running now, and all through my career, I've been able to get the attention. People know that I'm experienced and when they know you're experienced, then you're less likely to get the war pulled over your eyes.

 

 

Coming up after the break, we hear the details of David Kelly’s trip to India…

 

[27:17] So, I enjoyed in terms of an experience, that was very real and very grassroots.

 

He shares stories about the relationships that he built while travelling…

 

[28:42] They come and I'd help them get oriented. These are Indian fellows who'd never been probably out of their state apart from coming to another whole country.

 

We’ll learn about the lasting effects of the trip…

 

[34:00] It was a very humbling experience and quite a curious thing.

 

And that’s next. I’m Tyrone Shum and you’re listening to Property Investory.

 

 

In the first year of Kelly’s engineering career, he took off to India for six weeks.

 

[25:54] Well, it was wonderful. I actually, at that time in my life [I] was involved in a church in Melbourne. And they had a sister church in Madras, India, Southern India. Madras is now called Chennai. And that church had 12 branch churches all around the city. And they were all in the slum areas. So, very poor people and we went there to do whatever they wanted us to do.

 

[26:18] And people, the Indian people were blown away that we would have come. First of all, we look different. We, they were just honoured and blown away that we would come, we would have spent our money and our time and left our families to come and be with them for six weeks and do and serve them. And so, we did these little mini missions, if you like, at the 12 different churches over the six weeks.

 

[26:41] And we stayed as a group. There was about a dozen of us, guys and girls. We stayed at a YWCA. And we slept there, have breakfast there and then we'd get picked up in a bus and then taken to the next one of the places, churches where there was going to be some events happening. They'd pre organised events and everything. And they would cook lunch for us and then we'd probably have a snooze and then go out and hold some sort of event in the evening. And then we'd have dinner and they would cook.

 

[27:17] So, I enjoyed, in terms of an experience that was very real and very grassroots. You know, it was just something else. When I came to leave, I cried and cried because I was just so, felt that I built such great relationships with those people and they loved me. And I was so enthusiastic, I guess that they just kind of took me under their wing.

 

Throughout the six weeks, Kelly built strong relationships that continued into the future.

 

[28:15] They sent three of the young men over the next like three or four years, five years maybe, they would come to us. Our church in Hawthorne in Australia paid for them to come out to Hawthorn and they lived. And I was living in group houses at the time with two or three other people. And they would come and inevitably, I was asked to look after these guys.

 

[28:42] So, they come and I'd help them get oriented. These are Indian fellows who'd never been probably out of their state apart from coming to another whole country. They spoke English. And so, therefore, there was more contribution connection with those guys and I built these really great relationships with them. And I think I've always been very multicultural. I'm really quite a, I guess I would say I'm an international guy. I'm very interested in that and have done a fair bit of travel now.

 

[29:10] So, I build up those relationships and then, fast forward, I then moved up to Queensland. I had, by that stage [I] had three daughters. And I was living here and I started my screw pile business and I became, I was developing some really good projects. And I went on a trade mission, a Queensland Government construction trade mission to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, the UAE and Qatar. And we were pitching our business there and it was all very interesting and stimulating. The ex-premier of Queensland was Mika Hern and he was running the mission.

 

[29:46] And because we're close to Dubai, sorry close to India, I decided to fly back. So, I'm by that stage, relatively successful in the business world and I flew back to India. So, and that would have been like 12 years later, 15 years later, something like that. So, I go back to the same family that had hosted us on my trip, my first trip away overseas 15 years earlier. And the family, they'd gone here there and everywhere but the main family, the mother of the family was there, her husband had passed away.

 

While Kelly was visiting his host family, he saw the lasting effect that they had on each other’s lives.

 

[30:21] And we went, I went with one of the couples, we went for dinner at her place. And after dinner in a very humble little shack. After dinner, the couple said, 'we have to go and do a job, we'll go to do that, and we'll come back and get you'. And I thought, okay, fine. So, they went off and we, I'm sitting there almost in because I wasn't speaking Tamil, any Tamil. She was speaking no English. So, it was kind of, it was gestures and communication in that way. She walked over to me, she grabbed my hand and sort of lifted me as if to say come with me.

 

[30:59] So, I stood up from the kitchen table, she takes me into a room and we sit on the bed. She's sitting next to me. And I didn't think anything strange was at all, would ever happen in that context and nothing did. But I was kind of thinking, oh, this is interesting, what's going on here? So, she sat me down and after a couple of like, 30 seconds of that, I'm thinking okay, what's next? Should I be saying something? Am I not getting something?

 

[31:26] And I started then looking around the room. And it was just a, it was a not a pristine environment. But it was her environment, it was neat and tidy. And I'm looking around and in front of us was a fireplace and above that was this photograph of some sort, which had a very dirty glass front on the photograph, you know, smudged. And it was really hard to make out what that was. And so, the silence kind of went on for a few, what felt like a few minutes. And in the end, I'm thinking, I really don't know what's next or what's, if something is expected of me now or what's going on.

 

[32:03] Anyway, I looked up and I then took an actual look at this photograph that was on the wall. It was large, it was a big format. And I was looking at it thinking and because it was so dirty, it was hard to see what it was. But I started to look and then I had this amazing sense of Deja vu and I'm looking, and the photograph was a photograph of me and my family.

 

From this moment, Kelly had a big realisation.

 

[32:32] I then recalled what happened. I, because these young guys had come back to, they come to Australia for a year, they were doing a bible study course and I was looking after them. They, the families were all very interested in David and what he was doing and everything. And because I had a great connection with him while I was there, I remember getting one of my family photos, getting it blown up and sending it back there. And I'm talking [about] my family photo of me and my kids and my wife at the time.

 

[33:09] And so, this large format photo goes back with one of the guys when he heads back to India and they got it framed and it's sitting up there. I guess over the time with dirt and dust and things, it just got filthy. So, she took me into the room to sit me there and just so that I could see that she was trying to show me that.

 

[33:31] And when I finally recognized what was in front of me, she grabbed my hand and she said to me, 'every day we pray for you'. And I have to say that it was an incredibly humbling thing to go through because I know that was true. You know, she wasn't there just saying they would have been praying for me and my family every day.

 

 

In a future episode of Property Investory, we will explore Kelly’s property development journey…

 

[0:19] I met up here in Queensland on the Gold Coast, two guys who were colleagues of mine at university from Swinburne University.

 

We will hear about some of his most memorable property development moments…

 

[10:27] I started a project [of] 11 townhouses in Annalee in Brisbane, with just my own money in that and then the bank money.

 

We will learn about the importance of a good mindset…

 

[29:59] I slept perfectly for every night while I had that money borrowed from the bank because I knew I could pay it off.

 

And that’s next time on Property Investory.