About the Owner

Aaron Dando has been involved in property for many years, starting his career in the early 1990s as a land surveyor. That grounding at the front end of the development process shaped a practical understanding of land, planning constraints, and how buildings sit within their wider environment.

From there, his career progressed into commercial property investment and development, including senior roles in the UK within private family offices and estate trust environments, before returning to New Zealand. Today, Aaron remains actively involved in property investment and development through Dando Holdings, where he continues to work as a principal, developer, and long-term owner of property assets across residential and commercial sectors.

Dando Doors and Windows is a second-generation family business, originally established in the 1980s. In 2005, Aaron returned from his property career overseas to take on the reins of the business, bringing with him a broader property, development, and asset-management perspective that continues to shape the company today.

Much of Aaron’s work, both past and present, involves identifying opportunities, testing feasibility, navigating planning and consenting, delivering projects, and then holding and managing assets over the long term. This long-term ownership perspective strongly influences how he thinks about buildings, particularly the importance of durability, build quality, thermal performance, and decisions that continue to matter long after construction is complete.

That experience directly informs how Dando Doors and Windows is run. The business is managed with the mindset of a developer and long-term owner, not a short-term manufacturer. There is a strong focus on doing things properly the first time, from specification and detailing through to manufacturing quality, performance, and longevity.

Understanding how buildings are designed, funded, constructed, and ultimately lived in has helped shape Dando Doors and Windows into New Zealand’s largest producer of JMF-compliant timber joinery, supported by continued investment in people, systems, and processes to ensure consistent quality at scale.

For clients, this means joinery that is designed with real buildings in mind, joinery that considers insulation, moisture management, durability, and long-term maintenance, not just appearance on installation day, and working with a supplier who understands the commercial realities of construction programmes, budgets, and delivery risk.

Alongside running the business, Aaron regularly writes about the building industry, including insulation, timber joinery performance, building durability, and residential development, with a focus on practical, evidence-based guidance rather than marketing claims.

He is a Chartered Surveyor and a long standing full member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, applying those professional and ethical standards to how he works and how the business operates.