I’m Paul Gollan, and I run InDesign Trade & Maintenance Services on the Gold Coast. Before that, I spent 25 years in the shopfitting industry. People sometimes ask why someone with that background would choose to do maintenance, so here’s the short version.
Starting on the tools
My apprenticeship started in cabinet making, but at the start of my third year I moved to a shopfitting company and finished my trade with them. That’s where I really learnt the shopfitting trade: precision joinery built to tight tolerances in the factory, then installed on site in live retail centres with no room for error.
From there I worked in the factory, then out on the road as a site installer, and then as a site manager for several years — fitting out leading brand-name shops around Australia, where the joinery gets looked at by thousands of people a day and has to be right.
From the site to running the factory
From site management I moved through foreman, maintenance manager and project manager roles, and eventually became production manager for one of Australia’s leading shopfitting companies. I’ve also worked as a maintenance manager, including years in the childcare industry getting centres ready for assessment and rating reviews.
Seeing a job from every stage — drawings, production, install, handover and years of upkeep afterwards — teaches you where things actually fail, and how to fix them so they stay fixed.
Why maintenance
Alongside all of that, I’ve built everything from playgrounds to tiny homes, while renovating houses all along the way — including work on some of Queensland’s high-end properties. For the last several years I’ve also been clearing job lists for Gold Coast real estate agencies and property managers.
What I noticed is that good maintenance is hard to find. Property managers, centre directors and store managers mostly want the same thing: someone who turns up, does it properly, documents it, and doesn’t need chasing. That’s the business I set out to build.
A handyman gets it working. A cabinet maker with 25 years in the trade gets it right.
What that means for you
- One qualified trade across most of the job list
- Written quotes with a fixed scope, not verbal ballparks
- Before-and-after photos with every invoice
- $20 million public liability, with an active Blue Card, First Aid and CPR
If you’ve got a job list sitting in your inbox, send it through.