Our People
Denis Walker, Technical Founder and Andrew Rowlands, Director and Founder, both grew up on family farms in rural NSW. They believe this common sense, practical background has helped make Vacvator trucks what they are today.
Prior to Vacvator being established both Denis and Andrew had worked and/or owned businesses in the maintenance, mining and utility industries which gave them an understanding of the importance of safe, easy to operate plant and equipment and the benefit of long-term reliability.
Denis has been the one driving the direction and design for all trucks manufactured for the past 14 years and now mentors a young design team to take the business to another level. He has been relentless in ensuring the quality of the product is the best it can be and continually strives to look for new innovative products and ideas that will make our trucks more efficient, safer and easier to operate.
Con Alvanos has recently joined the business as the General Manager. Con has experience in running his own farming and hospitality business and more recently the challenges of running a national operation supporting the Australian Defence Force. His role is to ensure all our customers are delivered a quality product, and to ensure they are well supported by Vacvator.
Con works closely with Dominic Hallam, also newly appointed, to head up the sales function of the business as the National Sales Manager. Like his colleagues, Dominic also comes from a farming background, is a qualified Plant/Diesel Mechanic and has owned and worked in businesses in the mining and industrial sectors for the past 15 years. His knowledge of plant and equipment from an operational and maintenance perspective greatly benefits our existing and potential clients choosing to use Vacvator as their provider on non-destructive digging equipment.
Daniel Davis the Production Operations Manager, has been with the business for 10 years, he has been involved with the design and manufacture of the full Vacvator product range. As well as running production he makes himself available to clients for after sales backup to ensure they can keep their trucks productive; he also has the support of our technical team, designers and engineers to make sure clients have fast turnaround of information and support.
The operational team are supported by our internal accounts and HSEQ managers, they ensure our staff are well looked after and the operational functions and monitoring of our systems are compliant with internal and external safety, quality, and regulatory processes.
Our workshop team consist of boilermakers, labourer’s, painters, auto electricians and fitter/mechanic’s. Vacvator are a great believer in apprenticeship training and have 3-4 boilermaker and/or fitter apprentices in the workshop at any one time. Good process, procedures and on-the-job training enables apprentices to be flexible and productive early in their careers.
Vacvator are proud to support ‘women in manufacturing’, we currently have a number of women in trade positions and will be encouraging others to follow suit should they wish to take on manufacturing as a career.
At Vacvator we work hard to ensure the culture of our team is a priority, we all enjoy what we do, we all respect each other and work well together to make the best product we can for our customers. The pride taken on every truck we produce, shows in the quality of what we build.
Andrew Rowlands
Director and Founder
Con Alvanos
General Manager
Dominic Hallam
Sales Manager
Daniel Davis
Production Operations Manager
We can help you select the right model!
At Vacvator we have Non-Destructive Digging (NDD), Jetting/NDD combo, Dry Vac/NDD combo trucks available for our customers to select from. Our industry experts are here to help you select the right model and truck for your application.