The People Who Build Your Homes |1

The construction industry in the Philippines has barely moved in decades. Robots now build homes, cars drive themselves and wallets live in phones, but we still cling to the concrete hollow block — stacking homes the way toddlers stack Lego, only with thirty times the manpower and none of the instructions.

In this business, trust does most of the heavy lifting. The difference between a solid home and a disaster is not technology but the person holding the trowel. That’s a lot of blind faith in an industry where slapdash work, swapped materials, and outright fraud are practically dinner-table stories. (One study puts homeowner dissatisfaction at 87% — higher if you count the two partners who started Magis after their own horror builds.)

It wasn’t always this way. Construction workers were once seen as professionals.

Restoring that view won’t be easy. The ill-will cuts both ways:

• Workers penalized for mistakes but never trained to read plans.

• Jobs disappearing overnight during a pandemic or when projects end.

• Clients treating crews with suspicion, or worse, contempt.

Closer to home, we often wonder what this double life does to our own people — building dream houses by day, returning to less certain realities at night. The irony isn’t lost on them.

And yet, we’ve been lucky. Magis has found a core of men and women who buck the trend. On our sites, you feel it immediately: camaraderie, pride, intensity. Veterans pulling rookies aside to say, “That’s not how we do things here.” A culture where people police their own because they believe in something bigger than a paycheck.

They want their craft respected again. They work hard, resist compromise, and build some of the finest expressions of modern tropical design. More importantly, they carry themselves with integrity in an industry that often doesn’t.

We are proud of them. This is their story.

Magis Men and Women

When Lighting is Life or Death: Efren

Electrical work rarely gets the spotlight. It’s hidden in walls, tucked in ceilings, forgotten the moment the lights flick on. But a quarter of residential fires start with faulty wiring. That makes electricians less like background players, more like guardians of the home. You don’t entrust that to anyone whose standards are lower than yours.

Efren is one of those guardians.

He was recognized in unusual circumstances: quarantined for two and a half weeks after being exposed to a Site Engineer who tested positive for Covid. Instead of checking out, Efren checked in — keeping office hours on Zoom, directing his team remotely, and refusing to let the site lose momentum.

That sums him up. Pending work keeps him up at night. He double-checks himself before auditors even arrive. His record? Clean. Dependable. No back jobs.

The secret isn’t a system. It’s purpose. Efren wants to leave things better than he found them. That mindset doesn’t switch off when he clocks out. At home, he is as intentional as he is at work: dinner with his family instead of drinks at the bar, chess matches, sing-alongs with a guitar.

He and his wife, Sasana, have three children of their own — and one they adopted from a neighbor who couldn’t raise her. Efren treats her as he does his craft: with full commitment, no shortcuts.

There’s nothing flashy about his story. And yet, that’s the point. The same quiet values that make him a role model at home make him indispensable on site. Integrity, patience, pride.

Meet Efren. Proof that the most critical parts of a home are often built by people you’ll never see — until you see what they stand for.

Magis Men and Women

What Happens Wehn Work is Wired to Family: Andrian

In construction, reputation is currency. Deliver, and architects open doors. Slip, and you’re blacklisted before lunch. So when one of the country’s top architects rang to praise our team — singling out Andrian by name, on his own home no less — we knew it was more than just a compliment. It was testimony.

But Andrian’s story doesn’t start with blueprints. It starts at seven, selling vegetables before school to help feed six siblings. At fourteen, he was already on site, bluffing his age just to be allowed in. What he lacked in years, he made up for in curiosity — taking apart broken power tools, fixing what others tossed aside.

From helper to mason to foreman, he stacked certifications the way some people stack bricks: NCII in plumbing, in tiling, in whatever kept him moving forward. After ten-hour shifts, he still sat in TESDA classes. Hard work wasn’t new; it was the only language he knew.

On site, his values double as site rules: no job is beneath anyone, problem-solvers go far, humor keeps the day light. His men follow him not because he shouts, but because he cares. Safety, responsibility, fairness — these aren’t slogans for Andrian. They’re the habits of an older brother who never stopped looking out for others.

And beneath it all, one clear why: his four children in Quezon. The dream of building them a home strong enough to hold them all together. It’s a dream most of our men share. What makes Andrian different is how visibly it drives every single thing he does.

“That’s something that I try to remind myself of a lot, there are costs to going through the motions, but you have to ask yourself if the cost is worth it.”

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