A guy who’s rocking his trade
Stonemason Nicolas Piveteau was trained in every aspect of how to put brick, stone and concrete to good use.
IF NICOLAS Piveteau hadn’t hated school so much, he might not have become the artisan stonemason he is today.
Now based in Paraparaumu , Piveteau trained throughout France under the medieval guild system that saw him working on everything from Gothic cathedrals and ancient castles to the latest high-tech buildings in every region of the country.
He loves working with all types of stone and concrete, but the key attraction for him when he was 14 years old was to get out of the classroom and into doing something practical.
‘‘I just hated school and one of the best friends of my parents owned a masonry business. By the time I was 13 or 14 I would go out on Saturday with him on the truck to deliver sand and cement and I started to like it.
‘‘It was either the trade, or the army, to be honest.’’
His partner Angela, who he met when in New Zealand on a working holiday, says Nicolas has dyslexia so school was a bit of a nightmare for him, and the focus of a trade suited him down to the ground. Or the roof, as the job required. She says channelling his energy was always going to be good for everyone.
‘‘He had so much built up energy and his parents’ knew he needed to focus it on something. And stapling a teacher’s hand to a desk just wasn’t going to fly.’’ (An unfortunate incident which did much to hasten the end of his secondary schooling.)
He was one of those classic attention deficit disorder ‘‘can’t sit still’’ kids, always on the go but always easily distracted by things that didn’t hold his interest.
He says staying focused isn’t a problem when he’s working from 7am-6pm, ending each day with perfectly clean tools and a tidy job site, as he it means he has an outlet to channel his energy into. But he’s no fan of the administration that comes with running a business – ‘‘My office is a mess!’’ – which is where Angela is invaluable in ensuring that side of things goes smoothly, when she’s not doing her own job as an analyst for Z Energy.
His work ethic has resulted in the company growing froma one-man operation a year ago to now having four staff under him – there are three other French stonemasons, and an apprentice from Lower Hutt.
He takes pride in his attention to detail and the work ethic of his company.
‘‘We are there when we say we will be and we take care in the work site.’’
And now having an apprentice is his chance to pass on the training he gained in France, both through his first job, and then through the Companion du Devoir training system he entered when he was 17.
The Companion is the French craft and artisan training organisation that dates to the Middle Ages. All the trades who belong to it, be it masonry, bakers, carpenters or pastry chefs, among many others, do their own Tour de France, spending six months to a year learning about each region’s particular way of doing things.
In Angers Nicolas studied renovation, in Saint Etienne it was concrete and construction, in Bourges castle restoration and working in Lille was bricks and concrete.
‘‘I spent a year in Lille doing bricklaying and because there is a lot of wind and rain there the roof pitches are quite steep.
‘‘Then I spent five months on a big construction job with six cranes with 200 people on site and I was looking after 10 guys.
‘‘It was good to learn about managing a job – every three days 36 square cubic metres of concrete needed to be poured with trucks arriving and it had to get done.
‘‘It is nothing like the New Zealand attitude of ‘she’ll be right, we’ll get it done the next day’.
‘‘On the French construction site the load is there at three o’clock and it has to be done then.’’
The Companion du Devoir owns 80 houses, (most of which the companions have built) each accommodating between five and 100 Companions and managed by a Mere, a woman who acts as a second mother to the trainees. After a day’s work, there are night and weekend courses to help each craftsperson do well in business with skills such as looking after the accounts, or standard writing and maths lessons as most of the trainees have left school at a young age.
All up Nicolas spent nine years in training and he says the thoroughness means he can work confidently on anything from restoration work on old stone buildings to pouring a giant concrete kitchen bench in place.
Starting young meant learning to look out for himself. He says travelling around the country establishing who you are as a person can be daunting as a young man finding his way.
‘‘You have to learn to look after yourself, you get help of course but you have to grow up quick and have your wits about you in the business world.
‘‘You have some good bosses and some bad ones. But as a trainee you are a knowledge thief, a sponge – you just take the best from everyone you meet and make the most of every experience.’’
The training took about seven years with a year of teaching at the end which is the way of giving back to the trade. There is also a tradition where each Companion has to choose a virtue that they don’t have in abundance and then work towards cultivating that in themselves.
Nicolas chose temperance as a way of aiming for more moderation in his actions, self restraint being another way of saying it. Which was probably good news for his former school teacher.
He says the training regime also gave him responsibility for looking out for the younger trainees, such as advocating for them if they were having trouble with employees. One case was looking out for an apprentice whose pay was going to his parents who were mainly using it for booze and drugs so the apprentice couldn’t afford the petrol for his scooter to get to work. This didn’t make the employer too happy so Nicolas sat down with them and came to an arrangement which saved the job and kept the trainee at work.
Being given responsibility calmed him down as well, he says, seeing the industry from everyone’s point of view.
But about this time, around 2007, he was looking for something else to do and thought about becoming an insurance assessor. The trade was going into a downturn, both due to the economic slump and falling wages as increased immigration brough more competition to the sector, so he thought it was time for a change.
But for that he needed to speak English and he didn’t want to go to Britain to learn (something about not getting on with the English being the key reason) so New Zealand got the nod as he worked and travelled around for a year. He met Angela, she went to France with him, and ultimately he returned to New Zealand. He worked as a plasterer for another Ka¯piti firm before starting out on his own.
He says the broad training he got in France has been very useful in being able to work on a broad range of jobs here.
One of his more visible ones has been a huge stone wall in Raumati, which he says was a bit of a dream job.
‘‘It was right on the beach, has a beautiful view and sunshine every day. But then there are commercial jobs where the pressure’s on and you can actually die on the job if people aren’t watching what they’re doing.
‘‘So sometimes you have a great job, some times you’ve got the other kind to pay the bills.’’
But the Raumati wall has also been good for his apprentice in terms of providing a lot of satisfaction.
‘‘Peter use to be a car groomer and he told me he never knew he could do something that was appreciated by so many people.
‘‘He says people come up to him and say ‘this is amazing and you guys have great skills’. ‘‘He said ‘I used to be proud of my work when I was grooming cars but nobody said thanks’. On the wall job, everyone stops and asks him all kind of questions. And he says it is a proud moment.’’
For those interested in stonemasonry, the organisation responsible for it in New Zealand is the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation (BCITO) with the trade being a recent addition to the ITO system.
Nicolas and his other stonemasons keep busy by restoring quake damaged stone buildings, building large barbecues and doing facings in schist or greywacke, which is his preferred material. He likes the variety of work that’s available, and he particularly enjoys working on ‘‘the tricky stuff’’.
He also likes suggesting the best solution for any particular job and has designed and built a number of pizza ovens and barbecues.
‘‘The more complicated the job, the more I enjoy it.’’
Apart from stonework, he is skilled with concrete and he has a special knack in tracking down hard-to-find leaks in buildings, a skill he developed working on many 800-year-old buildings.
Outside of work, he is a keen windsurfer in Lyall Bay and Plimmerton, depending on where the wind is good.
He is also a keen motocross rider, does a bit of Crossfit and he plays European handball for the Wellington Vikings club.
‘‘I’ve got a bit of ADD. so I can’t stay still . . . so I’ve got to keep going.’’
For more information go to macon.nz