'Made Personal': Building FDC

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Founded by Ben Cottle 36 years ago, FDC has grown from its Sydney beginnings into one of Australia's leading construction and fit up businesses, and recently became a billion dollar ASX listed company. At the helm is Russell Grady, whose own sliding doors moment saw him join FDC as a cadet in his early 20s, before rising through the business to become CEO.
In this episode, Russell takes us inside that journey, and what it takes to deliver major projects at scale, including the increasingly complex world of institutional grade data centers. It's a fascinating conversation about building and maintaining an authentic culture, pricing risk, and why even in an era of rapid technological change, construction remains fundamentally a people business.

**Julian Biggins** (0:52)
Welcome to What Matters. We're joined by a very special guest today, Russell Grady, the CEO of FDC Construction and Fitout. We're also joined in the hot seat by Julian Biggins. Sort of subbing in for Andrew Pridham. Julian, you're in the host chair today. A very warm welcome to What Matters, as always, our joint CEO, Julian Biggins. Thank you, Tom, and big shoes to fill. I mentioned Russell Grady joining us from FDC Construction, and Fitout Russell is the CEO of FDC. Russell, welcome to What Matters.

**Russell Grady** (1:23)
Thanks, Tom. Thanks very much for having me on. Great to be sitting here with Julian.

**Julian Biggins** (1:26)
Just off the top, it's worth explaining how you guys go back and the relationship between FDC and MA. We've started before COVID, but it culminated in a pretty big build during COVID, and you're still friends. I'm pretty impressed.

**Russell Grady** (1:40)
Well, I think we're sitting in the boardroom here, and it was COVID, and the FDC did a great job of fitting out our office space. We'd had a couple of tries at it before, and we've known the group for probably over 15 to 20 years, so we spent more time with Russell more recently than we IPO'd the business, and it's a billion-dollar business, it's great. No, it's been an amazing journey, I think, meeting Julian through that process and the wider MA team through the fit out. For me personally, it was back in, probably went up with 2020 or so. 2020, yeah. And sitting in the space and utilizing their facilities is actually really special for us. We always like to stay very close to our clients' long-term view, and we love coming back to existing spaces that we've created and help bring that vision to life. Yeah, and you went to Critical, I believe.
It's a fine job. It was a special time in our lives. As you know, with COVID, there was lots of challenges.
So this wasn't easy, but what you've delivered is fantastic. No, it's a beautiful, beautiful space.

**Julian Biggins** (2:39)
Just on that, how did you navigate some of those COVID challenges, Russell? I mean, pulling off such a special space in such a difficult time must have been an enormous challenge.

**Russell Grady** (2:48)
Yeah, that came down to our relationships with our subcontractors and our team. I think the biggest challenge for construction through COVID was having this misbalance between project team members that could work from home potentially and site managers that can't work from home. And so we made a conservative effort to make sure that our team was very balanced in that basis, ensuring that everyone was going in the right direction and supporting our site team. So I think construction weathered the storm relatively well compared to a lot of other commercial office companies and things where people were working from home a lot.
We generally had people wanting to be working on the projects and pushing our projects along. So I think that helped absolutely weather the storm through there.

**Julian Biggins** (3:33)
Russell, we'll get to FDC and how you've built the business and built some of Australia's landmark projects. We'll also touch on your ASX journey and get some advice from you because you've had such an incredible career. But I want to start on that career, I guess, from cadet to CEO. You joined FDC just for our audience who might be uninitiated with this story, not familiar with it, as a cadet young. Just tell us about that entry into the industry and just give us a bit of a flavour on how you've progressed to become CEO.

**Russell Grady** (4:03)
Sure. Yeah. So I mean, the story with FDC was I knocked on the door, I got an introduction through an old neighbour of mine, very good mate, and he said you've got it. He actually got a job with FDC first, and I still remember him turning up at home, very proud with his Ute, well, he's quite a beaten up Ute those days, and a mobile phone, and he was absolutely just gobsmacked with the way that the team and the people in the business were behaving with him and including him into the business. He said to me, Russ, you've got to go for a job with these guys, they're amazing. So knocked on the door and asked for an interview, knocked on the door again, asked for an interview, and eventually we ended up having an interview with David Sanders, who's a director in our business now, still. He gave me my start, I was 21 years of age. I didn't really know what I was going to do.