John Richardson

by Dr. Iain Corness

Readers who have followed the responses to the post-tsunami situation down south may have heard the name John Richardson, the director of Ultimate Technology Services. John and his company UTS fabricated demountable schools in Maptaput for the Pattaya West Winds Masonic Lodge to take to Phuket. This was such a wonderful humanitarian act, I felt I should meet John Richardson.

John was born in Newcastle on Tyne in the UK, which makes him a “Geordie”. However, despite his Geordie accent, he is an Australian! Just from that alone, it was obvious that this was an interesting man.

He was the eldest of six children born to an engine driver for the UK railways, so Dad must have stopped at the station for a few nights. With so many children, John was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he used to do newspaper rounds before and after school to help the family finances.

He only went to “O” levels at school, but having topped the year for metalwork he was offered an apprenticeship by an engineering company involved in shipbuilding, which he took. An apprenticeship that took five years in those days, but he was also sent to Technical College where he gained his City and Guilds diplomas in steelwork, fabrication and technology.

Now graduated, the ambitious young man felt that his future was not building ships in the UK, but Australia was looking for young men with qualifications and enthusiasm. He had both, plus the ten pounds needed for the passage, which was assisted by the Australian government. He arrived in the great sunburned land down under as what was known then as a “Ten pound Pom!”

He had been offered a job in Whyalla, but by the time the boat arrived in Adelaide in South Australia, he was sick of travelling, so stayed there and took any job as a boilermaker to at least get some money coming in. However, he quickly realized that working for wages was not the way to make money. He really would need to leave the civilized city of Adelaide. “To make big money in Australia you had to go bush,” said John.

So he took his welding goggles and went into the heart of Australia to places like Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, all places that even the dingoes have deserted. However, John Richardson was prepared to work hard, despite the privations.

Very soon he had opened his own mobile welding company and recounted taking a team of boilermakers to Tarcoola in the Simpson Desert. “It was 52 degrees Celsius. 49 degrees was a cool change!” Tarcoola was so remote that the supply train only came through once a fortnight. “If you missed it you had to eat snakes or beg for food,” said John.

By this time, John and his strong work ethic was known in the industry and he was approached by Shell Oil to be their resident contractor where he stayed for the next eight years, servicing the Shell refineries. He also took out Australian nationality.

However, at the end of this time there was a slump in the oil industry in Australia, so John sold his company and following an approach by a New Zealand group moved to NZ, working in the construction of oil refineries there.

The slump followed, and after two years, John decided to return to the UK. “It was my first time back in 17 years. There had been loads of changes - and no work!” However, John Richardson was not the sort of man to sit around idle and collect the dole. He bought a news agency!

This was an enterprise that should have taken up his time, opening at 5 a.m. and closing at 6 p.m. seven days a week. However, he very quickly learned the ropes and just as quickly got bored with it.

The local Youth Training Scheme was looking for an instructor to teach engineering, so he took it on by opening the news agency in the early morning and waiting till his staff came on at 8 a.m. to allow him to go to the Youth Training Scheme which he did till 5 p.m. then returning to the paper shop to close it at 6 p.m. That should have been enough, but it wasn’t. He also took a course in Industrial Sociology and then took on the tenancy of a pub, in which he worked at night! With that workload, it should have been more than enough, but John said, “I got bored, so I decided to return to Australia, where I had been offered a job as superintendent of construction in Geelong.”

While back in Australia a New Zealand company asked him to come to Thailand, and so he moved here and completed seven projects for them all over the kingdom. But he needed to work for himself again.

In 1995 he opened his own company, UTS. “I opened it with nothing, but I had confidence in myself and the industry had confidence in me.” He had the land, designed the workshop and poured the slab, but had to wait until he got his first contract to be able build the shop from the advance payment!

By 1997 he had 60 staff and then came the crash. He assured his staff that nobody would be retrenched, on occasions having to draw all his credit cards to their limits to pay wages, but they struggled through, and today UTS has 120 staff with mechanical engineers, civil engineers, auto-cad designers and even QC.

John Richardson is the epitome of the self-made man. He has always had an unshakable belief in himself, but more than just the belief, he has been able to demonstrate that he had the capabilities to make his dreams reality. “The future is only 24 hours away,” said John, “so I take everything head on!” Do not forget the name UTS. It and John Richardson will be around for a while yet.