Phil Sargent is the founder and principal inspector at Great Southern Building Inspections. He brings more than 35 years of hands-on building experience to every job.
Phil started out as an apprentice carpenter with a respected quality builder in the Adelaide Hills, where he learned traditional craftsmanship and an eye for detail. He became trade qualified in 1991 and went on to work across South Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia.

Over that career he’s worked on family homes, apartments, high-rise, hospitals, hotels, universities, schools, government facilities, mining infrastructure and large industrial projects. That range gave him a deep understanding of how buildings go together, across both modern and traditional methods.

Phil returned to the Fleurieu Peninsula and ran his own residential building business for more than 13 years, specialising in renovations, extensions, structural repairs and rectification work, and building a reputation for quality and straight talk.

Now he’s stepped off the tools to do what he enjoys most: helping people make informed decisions about one of the biggest investments of their lives. Because he’s built and repaired homes himself, Phil doesn’t just spot a defect. He knows why it happened, how serious it is, and what it takes to put right.