Project Coordination (Australia) - Voluntary Administration

Project Coordination (Australia), a 50-year-old family-run construction company with offices in Canberra and Wollongong, entered voluntary administration on 19 March.

The company has delivered more than 900 projects worth more than $2.5 billion across every state and territory in Australia, predominantly in the ACT and NSW.

Its directors - father and son Paul and Gavin Murphy - said that they had injected a significant amount of their own personal money and that the company had a healthy pipeline of future work, but that losses incurred on fixed price contracts combined with escalating subcontractor, supplier and operating costs negatively impacted the company’s finances.

Administrators Jonathon Colbran, Frank Lo Pilato and Brett Lord of RSM Australia said the majority of the company’s 67 staff – 38 of whom are based in the ACT and 29 in NSW – had been made redundant and that work on the company’s 14 building projects - 10 in the ACT and four in NSW - had ceased immediately prior to the appointment.

An initial review of the company’s records identified more than 200 creditors owed more than $20 million, with the majority of these debts being less than two months old.