He is described by leading members of the local business community as a passionate advocate for his adopted city and the region, and has served terms as president of the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce, as a member of the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic council and Tauranga's City Centre Strategy Steering Committee, as well as his current role chairing Tourism Bay of Plenty. "He's exceptionally passionate about Tauranga and the region," said Tauranga Chamber of Commerce operations, events and training manager Anne Pankhurst, who has worked with Mr Bowker on several boards.
"He's very entrepreneurial in the way he thinks and his passion for the city is to see it grow and reach its potential. He wants to be involved in making that happen."
Brought up in a small town in the southern part of the Transvaal, Mr Bowker did a degree in building and construction management before completing a mandatory term in the South African Defence Force.
Doing his degree first instead of going straight into the compulsory service from high school was aimed at getting him an officer rank and easier life. But by the time he began his service, the term had been extended from nine months to a year. Then, with 100 days left to serve, the government added a further year.
"I ended up with two years where I did not use my qualification much at all," he said. "I learned it was best to get obligations done quickly."
His first job after the service was as a contracts manager with a housing company operating in the towns on the eastern side of Johannesburg, but he soon went into the construction business with his own company. In 1994, the family applied for residency in New Zealand, making the move in 1996. "I had run my own business in SA," he said. "But the construction methodologies are very different in New Zealand. I had knowledge of construction management, but it was a question of learning the game here."
He initially worked for Landmark Homes, before setting up his own company. He completed several smaller projects before the opportunity came up to redevelop the Tauranga Club site in 1999.
Over the next few years, working closely with his wife, he successfully transformed the building into a 16-level apartment and hotel complex.
Hotel on Devonport/Devonport Towers changed the profile of the inner city and helped pave the way to redevelop the central business district. The project was completed in 2004.
"Debi and I took it on ourselves," he said. "We were the property developer and the building contractor. It could only be done in Tauranga, where we had fantastic support from all the subcontractors."
However, the project's risk-to-reward ratio had been high.
"It was a big and risky thing to do on your own but the final result is extremely rewarding."
Since then Mr Bowker has been involved in other developments, but nothing on the same scale, in part because of the global financial crisis, and also because he was mentoring the growth of his wife's Repertoire chain.
But he did fulfil a long-held desire to do additional study, initially completing a postgraduate diploma in business studies at Waikato University, then going on to finish an MBA in 2008.
"I found myself going down a different track," he said. "It made me reconsider a lot of the things that I did and the way I made decisions, and helped me view them from different business principles."
Mr Bowker became more involved in community-based organisational governance, joining the boards of the chamber, the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and the Tourism Bay of Plenty board, though he has since cut back his board memberships to focus on his role chairing the local tourism body and give him more time to develop a new residential concrete housing concept he has come up with (see sidebar).
The chamber's Anne Pankhurst said Mr Bowker brought a very strategic view to his governance roles. "That's critical," she said. "Paul's not one to drill down into the details - he sees things at a glance and he's very forward thinking. He allows the business to be strategic and lets the executive team get on and do the work."
Concrete plan to bring affordability
Paul Bowker's latest venture is an entrepreneurial business called Clearform, which aims to bring a new and more affordable approach to residential house building.
Based on his years of experience in commercial construction, Mr Bowker believes that concrete can be used more widely as a primary building material for new houses.
The problem with using concrete in residential work was that most house builders specialised in wood or brick construction, and didn't have access to the skill sets to build poured walls, he said.
"Shuttering and form work is more of a commercial building construction skill. The current norm to build a concrete home is to use block work or tilt slab, but I always felt there had to be an easier way."
Mr Bowker says he has come up with a simple and robust method of setting up formwork to allow concrete walls to be poured with allowances for window openings and services. "You set the form up, fill it up with concrete, strip the form off and put the roof on," he said. "From a cost perspective, I think it's going to be very viable compared to timber or block work. Once we've done the tests and got the numbers we'll offer it to the market as an affordable robust alternative to what is currently available."
He is currently prototyping the first house, a build for daughter Meghan Maher, in Bethlehem. Paul and Debi also have a son Myles, qualified as an attorney, who is currently working in Los Angeles.
Mr Bowker is a golfer and is on the Mount Maunganui Golf Club board, but doesn't have much time to play.
"My golf is expensive in terms of time," he said. "But also cycling has got in the way. I go road biking, which is good fun."
Paul Bowker
Roles - founder, managing director, H & H Construction, chairman, Tourism Bay of Plenty.
Age - 59.
Born - Vanderbijlpark, South Africa.
First job - housing company contracts manager.
Currently reading - The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett.
