Under the leadership of Managing Director Jim Whiting, BADGE Group has grown substantially over the past three decades. With offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth and projects across Australia, BADGE is a prominent, private player in the construction space. Jim recently sat down with The CEO Magazine to discuss the groups impressive journey.
Ive been with BADGE for 30 years. Prior to that, I started off doing architecture at Adelaide University. I figured out that it wasnt quite my cup of tea, so I had a year off doing labouring and construction work Jim said.
I enrolled in Building Technologynow titled Construction Managementat the University of South Australia. I got a degree, and then worked for a building materials company where I trained across the business to be a manager.
A few years later, the company was taken over and one of my co-workers, Barry, said, Bugger that; lets do our own thing. We all left on 1 July 1983 and started BADGE, which at the time was an acronym for Barry, Alan, David, Graham, and Brian. Jim didnt really fit into the acronym, so I missed out. We were just looking for a name to start trading and thats how we came up with BADGE.
After four years, all the other guys left the business. Ive got seven brothers, and my family bought some of the company and I bought some more, so today my brothers and I own the company; however, none are in the organisation from a day-to-day point of view.
We started off with those six guys, known as the Badgers, and were now at around 240 employees.