About A1 Electrical

Darren Bain - Co-owner

Darren Bain founded A1 Electrical in 2006 after returning to Dunedin from travelling overseas. Mosgiel has always been home for Darren and it’s where he completed his electrical apprenticeship after high school. Darren is driven and has a ‘do it yourself’ attitude, he has built A1 Electrical from the ground up to the flourishing business that it is today. He now has an excellent team behind him, and his wife Phillipa also takes care of the administration side of the business.

Darren enjoys managing a team and seeing projects from start to finish. He’s found reliability and good communication skills have been crucial to building a client base and working with a wide range of outside trades. Darren expects a high-quality level of work from his staff, maintaining a high standard is a key part of his business model. Most of A1 Electricals business is from word of mouth, they do very little, if any outside advertising.

A1 Electrical is proudly locally owned and operated and are widely involved in many aspects of the Mosgiel community.  As a growing business, Darren likes to bring through apprentices in the trade and sees it as a good way to contribute to the wider workforce by upskilling someone. Darren enjoys coaching junior rugby at the Taieri Rugby Club and A1 Electrical are proud sponsors of the Taieri Squash Club.
 

Phillipa Bain - Co-owner

Phillipa has been with A1 Electrical from the start, in 2006. She has always worked behind the scenes managing the accounts and helping to run the business. Along with A1 Electrical, Pip has several umbrellas, she also works for a hospitality business and is a member of the Mosgiel Community board.

Pip and Darren are passionate about running their own business and as parents with two children, they like that as business owners, they have taken charge of their life’s and run their own days, rather than answering to others. It means that both Pip and Darren can better balance family life and their time is more flexible, allowing them to keep family as a focus and be there for their kids.

Outside of work Pip enjoys spending time with her family and is very community focused. She may be a busy mum, but she still manages to squeeze in a few trips to the gym and hopefully a run each week.
 

Keegan Simpson - Electrician

Keegan has been a qualified electrician for almost two years. He started his apprenticeship in 2011 through Etco and spent all but 8 months working with Darren and the team at A1 Electrical.

With almost five years’ experience at A1 Electrical, Keegan has a great skill set and knowledge base of clients and companies that work with A1 Electrical. For Keegan, the people really make the business and A1 Electrical have great relationships with other trades they work with. Darren sets a good example, with high standards, who is hard but fair.

Learning practical skills and building relationships with other skilled tradespeople has been one of the things that Keegan has found most rewarding about being an electrician. Keegan enjoys seeing a job come together and likes the feeling of leaving a home completed to a high standard, with the owners proud of their home.

Outside of work, Keegan enjoys spending time with friends, watching sport and renovating his own home. Learning practical skills and building relationships with other skilled tradespeople has been one of the things that Keegan has found most rewarding about being an electrician.
 

Cory Mackle - Electrician

Cory joined the A1 Electrical team in November 2017. Cory is a real asset to the team as he brings a wealth of experience to his role. Cory has been in the trade for 21 years and has worked around the world in a wide range of electrical sectors. The call of Dunedin and his family have always been a strong pull and have seen him come back time and again to Dunedin.

Cory has worked across Sydney doing commercial, domestic and machine manufacture, as well as in London in the commercial sector and in Central Queensland in domestic and industrial electrical work for the coal mining industry.  He brings a great background in a wide range of electrical settings to A1 Electrical. 

Cory enjoys working for A1 Electrical Contractors as he has a variety of work in his day to day across domestic and commercial. Being based in Dunedin also allows quality family time.
 

Ben Whitehead - Electrician

Ben has been with A1 Electrical since January 2017. Ben has been a qualified electrician for over four years and has worked across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.

Ben originally trained in Gore and gained a lot of experience installing heat pumps. Ben also gained a lot of experience in Gore working at the water treatment plants and so has a lot of knowledge around variable speed drives, large motors, and pumps etc. He also worked for an Invercargill based company where he spent time installing wood chip boiler systems for schools and doing a lot of commercial fit-outs and residential work.

Ben has a level 4 Electrical Engineering qualification, along with being a certified Fuji installer. He is also a member of the Electrical Workers Registration Board. Ben enjoys being a part of the A1 Electrical team and is always eager to build on his electrical knowledge and improve his skill set. He finds it really rewarding when a job comes together and is completed to a high standard. He finds the customers and staff at A1 Electrical are all easy going and great to get along with.

Outside of work, Ben is a big car and motorsport fan. At the weekends you’ll usually find him working on his Nissan Sylvia S15 or other cars and rally cars and he’s very busy with the Otago Sports Car Club and motorsports events.
 

Jack Dalton – Apprentice through Etco

Jack has recently started his apprenticeship with A1 Electrical through Etco. A1 Electrical want to bring future electricians to the forefront as if people aren’t trained, New Zealand could have a deficit in trade staff in the future, which could impact on New Zealand’s key infrastructure.
Jack wanted a solid job and so decided to pursue an electrical apprenticeship. He’s made a smart decision, as it’s a job he can always fall back on and doesn’t come with a huge amount of debt, like University.

He’s enjoying working at A1 Electrical, as they’re a nice group of people. Jack was initially nervous about coming into the industry, as he thought it might be hard going, but everyone has been really nice and supportive, and he’s found Darren at A1 Electrical to be a great boss.

Jack finds it rewarding to see a finished job that he has contributed to, and to be able to say he helped to complete something tangible like someone’s home or business. Seeing happy customers is also a great feeling.