Keegan Payne
Backstory
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Tapanui, a small farming village in West Otago that sits below the Blue Mountains. It’s not famous for much, but with the mountains on the doorstep it was a great place to be a kid.
What did your parents do, and what did you take from them?
Mum raised five boys — me and my four brothers — and has worked in floristry most of her life. From her I took core family values, the kind I’m now carrying on as I grow my own young family. Dad started out driving trucks for Dynes Transport and, over 25 years, worked his way up to GM of Operations. From him, a strong work ethic.
What did you spend the most time on as a kid?
Mates and sport, mostly. Xbox, movies, the beach, and plenty of rugby.
What did you do before TakeoffQS?
Thirteen years in the building merchant trade. I started as a yard boy and worked through to estimator, then commercial account manager, then new business development manager. So I’ve seen both the estimating side and the customer side of construction from the inside.
How did you end up at TakeoffQS?
A growing interest in emerging tech, and a belief it could do real good in construction. AI gets talked about in this industry far more than it gets used. I see a market that’s ready for change, with leaders who are genuinely hungry for it.
What I care about
What’s broken in estimating that you want to fix?
A build runs in a straight line — concept to spade in the ground to finished home — and there are a hundred ways it gets disrupted along the way. I think we hold the key to one of the earliest constraints: estimating lead times. Ease that and the holdups downstream flow more freely.
What do you look for in the companies we work with?
Leaders who are fed up with the status quo and actually willing to act on it, not just say it’s not good enough and carry on. We need people who’ll give us honest feedback so we can be part of the solution. Where it doesn’t work is anywhere too comfortable to change.
A mistake you see builders make repeatedly?
Under- or over-pricing a job just to get it off the desk because they’re in a hurry. Over-price it and you’re out of contention. Under-price it and you erode your margin. Either way it’s wasted time and people power.
What gets you fired up about this work?
It’s a well-defined problem in an industry that needs it, and we’ve got the core ingredients to actually solve it. That’s the bit that keeps me going.
What values matter most in how we build TakeoffQS?
Get the output right — the measurements and the tech are already there; our job is to make them useful. Build with clients, not at them — the value comes from listening and working alongside them on something that actually helps. Be part of the solution — stay open to the industry’s feedback instead of telling it how it should work.
The human bits
Favourite mantra in a work context?
“The longer you’re at the crease, the easier the runs come.”
Secret skill?
I played rhythm guitar in a semi-successful band called Dusty Sunday through uni. We’re on Spotify, if you go looking.
Dinner with anyone, alive or dead?
Jimi Hendrix. Just to watch him rip on the guitar and pick his brain.
What can you nerd out on for hours?
Guitars, endlessly. Make, model, colour, hardware, the little features that tell you the year and model, who played what and so on. And maybe throw in obscure Otago NPC rugby players going back twenty-odd years.
How do workmates describe you?
Calm, collected, optimistic, helpful, measured.
Meet the rest of the team
