Overall building conditions in Australia may be terrible, but a number of construction firms are taking advantage of the mining boom to bring in significant dollar value increases in work.
According to the Housing Industry Association-Cordell Construction 100 report, the largest 100 construction contractors in the country were awarded contracts worth a whopping $70.9 billion over the past financial year, representing 57 per cent of all construction projects started.
John Holland, a diversified contracting and engineering service provider and a subsidiary of Leighton Holdings topped the list.
Thanks to a number of key project wins, including the $570 million City to Maribyrnong River section of Victoria’s Regional Rail Project, the Columboola to Wandoan South Transmission Line project in South West Queensland, stage 1 stockyard works associated with the Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal project – also in Queensland – and a handful of projects associated with huge resource developments such as Chevron’s Wheatstone project in Western Australia and the Ichthys LNG project in Darwin, the contractor raked in a whopping $7.09 billion in new work last year.
The good news continues to roll in for John Holland. In July, the firm was honoured with a major award for its Adelaide Metropolitan Rail Upgrade: Gawler Passenger Line Upgrade State 4, a project involving a full track upgrade along a 27-kilometre corridor passing through Elizabeth from Gawler Central to Mawson Lakes.
Two other firms within the Leighton Group, Leighton Contractors and Thiess, came in second and third in the Housing Industry Association-Cordell Construction 100 report, bringing in $6.50 billion and $4.54 billion worth of contracts during 2011/12, respectively.
Housing Industry Association chief economist Harley Dale says the results highlight the strong performance of the civil construction sector in Australia.
“The common thread across all companies at the top of the Construction 100 list is a strong presence in the mining, civil engineering, and community construction sectors, with John Holland Group this year standing out from the pack in terms of this diversification,” Dale says, noting that the high value of projects in the mining sector meant the geographic distribution of new construction work was skewed toward resource-rich states.
Perhaps surprisingly, Queensland beat Western Australia to take top spot in terms of new work generated, largely on the back of the Australia Pacific LNG Project.
A total of $42.3 billion in new work came in in the sunshine state over the last financial year, outstripping the $31.3 billion generated in WA.
