Gemini Pinkenba is a vast shop in Queensland that specialises in non-drive
Centre manager Dan Wilson was our Zoom tour guide for this Queensland behemoth of a shop. He’s had a profound effect on the efficiency, profitability and team morale since he’s been at the helm. For starters turn over has more than doubled under his stewardship.
It’s an international team with staff from the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and the Philippines, as well as Aussies of course. There are a number of team bonding initiatives including plenty which include the whole family. The staff are also shouted lunch every fortnight.
When we say this is a big shop, we’re talking 9800m2. It’s so big that they use walkie talkies to communicate between the office and production team and we doubt anyone has to worry about achieving 10,000 steps a day.
The exterior of the shop has great kerb appeal and the customer area is welcoming. The workshop is spacious, clean, tidy and well laid out. As well as collision repair Pinkenba undertakes all its own mechanical work and is also trialling a recalibration system from the UK. There are two drive through spraybooths with a third about to be installed when we visited which Dan hopes will allow them to repair an extra 10 cars per week.
There are a lot of young people in the business including six apprentices. Dan feels that the career structure at AMA Group offers these youngsters a lot of opportunity and there are often internal promotions. The customer service officers also receive training and AMA Group have fostered a training culture throughout the group in recent times. Dan has now been promoted to area manager: “That’s all on the back of my team. They work really well together. If someone is off sick everyone pitches in to pick up the slack. I’m really proud of them and what we achieve here,” he said.
One of the improvements the team has achieved is in the parts department which is like it’s own warehouse. Parts are stored on racks so they have ground clearance (it is Queensland after all) and they have a detailed system which allows for quick retrieval.
Outside there are often 200 cars on site, there’s a huge car park at the rear and cars are parked according to when they are due to enter the workshop. Over in the estimating bays there’s a four post hoist so that estimators be thorough.
AMA Group is passionate about keeping its workforce safe and has a detailed and highly visible WHS system in place.
Pinkenba impressed with its organisation, team spirit and profitability (yes we asked). It’s not easy running such a huge operation but it was looking very slick.
staff: 34
type of work: Non-Drive
Number of cars pw: 50