Kapitol Team Member, Anton Ilchenko, takes on the English Channel
Kapitol’s Anton Ilchenko is swimming the English Channel solo, no wetsuit, to raise funds for YMCA Open Doors and learn-to-swim programs for Victorian kids.
As captain of the Western Bulldogs, Marcus Bontempelli leads in an environment where feedback is immediate, performance is public and the next test is never far away. Roles change. Selection changes. Momentum changes. The team still has to turn up, trust each other and keep working.
That made him the right person to lead the latest episode of Kapitol Conversations, joined by Kapitol co-founders David Caputo and Andrew Deveson, and Western Bulldogs AFLW player and Kapitol cadet Isabelle Pritchard. The conversation sat at the point where elite sport and construction meet: not in the scoreboard, but in the people behind it.
The answer that kept coming back was simple: teams hold under pressure because of what has already been built. Trust before the hard conversation. Discipline before the deadline. Curiosity before the moment you realise you do not know enough. Space before the next leader is ready to step forward.
That is the real lesson from the episode, and it is a useful one for anyone thinking seriously about leadership in construction.
Marcus described the football club as a “feedback factory”. It is a sharp phrase because it captures the speed of elite sport. A team plans, performs, reviews and adjusts. Then it does it again. That rhythm is familiar to anyone who has worked on a live construction project, where decisions turn into action quickly and small gaps can become bigger problems if they are left alone.
Marcus was careful about the other side of feedback. The little things matter, but teams can also lose perspective if every detail is treated with the same weight. The skill is knowing what the moment needs. Sometimes that is a direct challenge. Sometimes it is support. Sometimes it is stepping back long enough for the team to find its own answer.
The strongest point came when he spoke about difficult conversations. In any high-performance environment, accountability cannot be saved for the comfortable moment. Someone may need to hear that their role is changing. A standard may need to be reset. A decision may need to be made before everyone agrees with it.
Marcus’ view was that leaders need to invest before they draw on trust. He spoke about putting “water in the well”, building enough goodwill, care and shared purpose so that a difficult conversation has somewhere to land.
That is as true on a construction site as it is in a football club. A hard conversation about quality, safety, programme or behaviour lands differently when the relationship is already there. Trust is built in the planning meeting, the site walk, the early warning, the follow-up call and the moment someone admits there is an issue before it becomes a bigger one.
For Kapitol, that matters because construction is still a people business. Technology helps us see issues earlier and make better decisions, but people still have to talk clearly, listen properly and back each other when the pressure rises. The systems matter. The relationships make them work.
Isabelle Pritchard brought a different kind of perspective. At the time of recording, she had spent six years in the Western Bulldogs AFLW programme and six weeks as a Kapitol cadet. One part of her life placed her in a senior sporting environment. The other placed her at the start of a construction career.
She spoke openly about what she has taken from football into construction: being willing to ask for help, being vulnerable when you do not know the answer and learning from people with more experience.
“Surrounding myself with people who know more than me is so valuable.”
She described both football and construction as environments where there are always people who know more. Her response is not to hide that gap. It is to use it. Ask questions. Stay curious. Learn from the people who have already seen the problem before.
That is a strong message for anyone entering the industry through construction graduate programs, cadetships or early career roles. Construction can feel overwhelming because the stakes are real. The decisions are practical. The work is happening around you. Isabelle’s point was that confidence grows faster when you stop pretending you already know and start using the resources around you well.
She also spoke about the harder side of team performance. The AFLW Bulldogs won a premiership in 2018, their second season. Later came a rebuild. There were periods where the results were not coming, and motivation was harder to find.
“Motivation is low, but staying consistent is the most important thing during those times.”
For Isabelle, the thing that carries a team through those periods is the relationship between teammates. You can have hard conversations when there is something to come back to. You can stay consistent when the people around you still matter to you. You can keep showing up because you are not doing it alone.
That idea connects directly to construction. Projects have their own tough periods: delayed access, late design changes, procurement pressure, site constraints, weather, defects, fatigue. A team that only works when everything is smooth is not a high-performing team. The better test is what happens when the work gets harder and the visible progress slows down.
Marcus made a similar point when he spoke about difficult weeks in a football season. In those periods, resilience is not an abstract idea. It is right in front of you.
“Showing up is most of the battle.”
He described showing up mentally and physically, putting your pride on the line and turning up for each other as “80% of it”. The rest is execution under pressure.
That line works because it does not make resilience sound heroic. Most of the time, resilience is ordinary. It is coming back to the plan after a poor result. It is picking up the phone when the conversation will be difficult. It is doing the check properly when everyone is tired. It is being disciplined enough to keep the standard when the emotion has gone.
David Caputo came at the same idea from a business angle. Asked how his leadership has changed, he did not talk about having a fixed style. He spoke about the need to evolve.
The construction industry has changed. Generations have changed. The old “stick” style of management, as David put it, does not build long-term performance. It may get a short response, but it does not build a team that can keep improving over time.
“I think motivation is very temporary.”
David’s focus now is less about trying to motivate people in short bursts and more about creating discipline: through support, training, structure and clarity. That is a more useful way to think about high-performing teams. Motivation can help start the work. Discipline keeps it going when the work is hard.
For David, one of the clearest tests came during COVID and the inflationary period that followed across the construction industry. He said plainly that Kapitol would not be who we are without those years.
At the time, much of the industry was protecting itself by cutting back, standing people down or reducing risk wherever possible. Kapitol made a different call. We backed our people and used the time to strengthen systems, training and business improvement.
“We had two choices… We can batten down the hatches… or, we can double down and go hard.”
That decision was not easy. It also said more about the business than any internal message could have. Values like Supportive and Authentic are simple to state when the market is strong. They matter most when they cost something.
David’s reflection was that tough periods show leaders who they are. You can follow what everyone else is doing, or you can look at the situation differently. For Kapitol, the decision to keep investing in people and systems helped shape the business that came after.
That point matters now because the business has grown quickly. From 2018 to today, Kapitol has grown into a builder with more than 500 full-time employees, a project pipeline of up to $4 billion and work across high-tech industrial, residential, commercial, aviation, education and other sectors. Growth at that pace asks more of leadership, not less.
Scale brings responsibility. The bigger the work, the stronger the systems need to be. The more complex the projects, the more important it becomes to build trust and discipline before the pressure arrives.
Andrew Deveson gave one of the most honest reflections in the episode. He spoke about driving home after a difficult day and knowing he had not led the way he wanted to. A conversation did not land. A meeting did not go to plan. The moment asked for something different.
That admission matters because it avoids the polished version of leadership. Good leaders do not reach a final form and stay there. The work changes. People change. The same person may need something different from you this month than they needed last year.
“You’re always getting better at it because people change.”
Andrew’s point was that leadership cannot be mastered and then put away. It has to be practised. That is true for directors, project managers, site managers, supervisors, graduates and cadets.
David built on the same theme when he spoke about feedback. He said there is never a day where he and Andrew sit there thinking the business is “shooting the lights out”. Other people may point to the growth, the rankings or the milestones. Internally, the better instinct is to keep listening: to the business, to clients and to every person around us.
That is a useful guardrail for a growing construction company. Recognition can be a milestone, but it cannot become the measure of whether the work is finished. We need the feedback loop. We need the uncomfortable truth. We need people close enough to the work to tell us what is actually happening.
That is also where innovation in the construction industry becomes more than a technology story. New tools matter, but improvement depends on the habits around them: asking better questions, reviewing honestly, sharing lessons and changing the next decision because of what the last project taught us.
Near the end of the episode, Marcus returned to a lesson that felt especially relevant for both sport and business: knowing when to use your voice.
“There’s times to be loud and there’s times to be quiet.”
He said the task is working out which moment needs which voice, or whether it needs no voice at all. That is a mature leadership point. Early in a leadership journey, stepping forward often feels like proof that you belong. Later, stepping back can become the better move.
Marcus spoke about the risk of always being the loudest voice in the room. If a leader fills every silence, other people do not get the chance to process, challenge, contribute or lead.
“If you don’t create the room and the space for others to walk into, you won’t hear from them.”
Andrew connected that idea to Kapitol. Whether senior leaders like it or not, a room changes when they walk into it. The same would be true in a football club with a long-serving captain or coach. Presence has weight. The job is to understand that weight and make sure it does not stop other people from stepping forward.
That is an important point for a business that wants leadership to exist beyond titles. If leadership only sits with the loudest or most senior person in the room, the business does not scale well. Stronger teams create room for others to speak, learn, take responsibility and bring a better idea forward.
Isabelle’s cadetship gives that idea a practical shape. A young person can only ask good questions if the room allows questions. A graduate can only learn quickly if the people around them make the work visible. A future leader can only step forward if current leaders make space.
High-performing teams are built before pressure arrives. They are built through trust, curiosity, discipline, honest feedback and leaders who know when to step forward and when to create space. They are built by people who can admit what they do not know, learn from those around them and keep showing up when motivation is low.
The football language may be different from the construction language, but the takeaway is familiar. Do the work early. Build the trust before you need it. Stay disciplined when the feeling drops. Keep listening when the results look good from the outside. Make room for the next person to step forward.
Marcus closed with a thought he said has become a kind of north star for how he treats people across football, his career and life more broadly.
“People… don’t remember what you did for them but they remember how you made them feel.”
That is a good test for any leader. The work matters. The way we do it matters too.
The full Kapitol Conversations episode with Marcus Bontempelli, David Caputo, Andrew Deveson and Isabelle Pritchard is available to watch now.
