Brad Leggett | The CEO Magazine

Getting a tattoo of the company logo was an unexpected highlight of a busy year for Brad Leggett, Managing Director of Layher Australia and finalist in the Construction, Transport and Logistics category at The CEO Magazine’s 2026 Executive of the Year Awards – Australia.

The triangle with a man in the center shows that people are at the heart of the scaffolding firm, with the triangle being the strongest shape.

“I think that really says a lot about our culture and who we are, that we value our people and that the strength of our company really comes from our people,” Leggett tells The CEO Magazine.

He took the inspiration at a company open day in Switzerland where the company was opening a new depot, with a tattooist brought in to help celebrate.

“He was there for five hours. I reckon there were 50 people in the line when he left and so he couldn’t get everyone done, so he had to return,” he recalls.

“I loved that. So last year, after being there for 15 years, the staff surprised me and put on a big dinner. And then I went and got the tattoo the next day.”

Leading the way

When Leggett first started in the industry, scaffolding was traditionally seen as one of two things: either as edge protection to stop you falling off a building or as a working platform for you to stand on to do some work.

“Now the role of scaffolding is much broader,” he says. “We get involved in cropping, which means holding up slabs so buildings can be built. We provide temporary buildings with edge protection and temporary roofs.

“We provide grandstands, we provide stages and seating. We provide pop-up artworks. We provide for the Vivid Sydney light festival. So the scope for scaffolding has grown immensely.”

No longer simply an add-on, scaffolding is now a standalone industry in its own right. For Leggett, that evolution has been exciting to watch, with Layher Australia’s product ranges responding to the shift.

“Outside of that, there’s so much more focus on health and safety, not just for the end users, but for the actual scaffolders themselves. So our products are so much safer to install,” he says.

“They’re incredibly light. There are so many more systems. It used to be up to the scaffolders to go out there and take a risk to create a working environment for others to follow. But now we see the scaffolders leading the way with safety.”

Pioneering approach

The technology being used within the industry is also transforming at a dizzying pace, with Layher Australia at the forefront of the innovation. Indeed, tech is developing at a much faster rate than physical products within the industry, according to Leggett.

“When I started, there were no plans. There were hand-drawn sketches and then computer-aided design,” he recalls. “But now we have SIM2Field, which is a holistic digital twin approach where we do 3D scannings of the projects. We create digital twins online.

“We have augmented reality on apps on people’s smart devices that they can superimpose the scaffold where it’s going to be before it gets built.”

The rise of the pop-up concept is also transforming the scaffolding industry, with Leggett highlighting exciting projects he has worked on like the stage for the Crusty Demons world record bike jump and the ski ramps for the Olympic Games.

“People just want stuff to come in, magically appear and then go,” he explains. “If you look at The X Factor or any of those TV shows, they’re all sitting on our scaffolding.”

The human touch

Such projects give the industry a ‘sexy’ side that brings many new recruits in, but the reality is that most of the work is distinctly unsexy, Leggett admits.

“It’s shaving a shift off a shutdown in a gas plant. It’s having two less guys who need to go to a remote site to scaffold down under a bridge. They’re the things that actually make a real difference,” he notes.

Another big drawcard for Layher Australia when it comes to new recruits are its family values. Among the shareholders are cousins and managing partners Georg Layher and Carolin Langer, who are the grandchildren of the company’s Founder Wilhelm Layher.

“So it’s still a family business. And those shareholders travel to Australia every year, so they know all our key clients. They go out and see our projects and stay very close to the business,” Leggett reveals.

“One of our mottoes is: ‘Together we’re on the way up’. And that’s what we really live by. It means that we’re together with the clients, we’re together as a team and we’re together as a global organization.

“And that culture is really hard to describe, but it’s very easy to feel when you’re in there and you live it.”