Tony Skinner is the chief editor of this book series titled “It’s My Time”. Tony authored his first book, Contract Planning and Administration, in 1986 followed closely by Construction Equipment and Techniques, which were prescribed texts for TAFE civil engineering programs running throughout Victoria. In 1989 he co-founded Soiltech Investigations Pty. Ltd., a soil testing company which, to date, has conducted over 20,000 projects across Victoria. In 1993 he moved to Ontario, Canada, and established a computer training centre for children, before moving into the mining industry and working in gold and copper mines.
Returning to Australia in 2000, Tony joined RMIT’s civil engineering department in Melbourne and, in the years preceding his retirement in 2014, was manager of the civil engineering, building, and surveying departments in the TAFE sector. As well as developing the Associate Degree program for civil engineering, Tony coordinated the production of online course texts for over forty civil engineering subjects, personally authoring many of them. Since retirement, Tony has extended his editing and proofreading experience to cover all aspects of real estate, as well as most trades, finance, horticulture, information technology and photography.
After school, my first career choice was as an Accountant, so I studied Accountancy for several years before the opportunity to join the computer industry presented itself in 1969. I was employed in the computer industry for over 20 years, mostly in Computer Operations Management. I then went on to use my computer skills in the Sign and Display industry which had just started to embrace computer technology. In 2009 I resigned from full-time employment to take up a career in real estate. My first project was the construction of two townhouses in Niddrie, Victoria. Whilst undertaking this project I developed a program for conducting financial feasibility suitable for all types of real estate projects. This program has been distributed to over 5000 investors in Australia.
Since that time my wife and I have purchased eight properties in the US and I have undertaken the role of teaching others how to invest in the US market with some measure of safety. We are now in the final stages of selling our US portfolio and are completing the construction of three houses in Toowoomba, Queensland. Over the past nine years, I have seen many feasibility studies prepared by novice investors for a variety of real estate projects: most are horrifying, many are just outright dangerous. They generally all have the same failing and that is a complete lack of understanding of how cash flow will play out over the period of the project. This provided the inspiration to write a book on the subject.
Metta Gorway-Hayes has been in real estate property management for four decades and most of that time has been spent in residential, commercial, industrial and rural properties management. Metta also teaches upcoming real estate professionals in Victoria. She has lots of experience in managing properties in Australia and brings in her wealth of practical experience to this editorial panel.
Nagarajan Kuppuswamy is a Cloud Solution architect who works in the Cloud Space in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) Spectrum. In his past roles he has worked in Enterprise Solution, Integration and other critical areas of an enterprise. He has successfully executed various consulting and advisory services for customers during the SDLC cycle to assist architecture & design definition, performance issues and diagnostic issues.
The editorial panel will be supplemented by subject matter experts for each book title.