From strength to strength

On the rise: Brendan Bilston sees many opportunities in the government sector.

For Canberra-based construction project management team Point Project Management, the sky is not so much the limit but the beginning of a whole new phase of growth. In June this year, the company won a $130 million project to oversee the upgrading of the air warfare destroyer project as part of an extensive rebuilding of the Royal Australian Navy’s port facilities at Garden Island in Sydney.

“We’ve got growth in a variety of sectors,” says the company’s principal, Brendan Bilston, who reels off growth opportunities for his company in the tone most of us would use to read a shopping list. “Twelve months ago the biggest projects we’d done were in the vicinity of $30 million; now we have two projects that are over $100 million.

“We’re about to deliver a new Qantas terminal at the Canberra airport and see huge potential in facilities for airlines and aircraft navigation. Education is another big sector for us where we see a lot of work coming online, as well as healthcare and hospital reconstruction and housing developments. And that’s before we get into the private sector or state governments where we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Beginning with a modest $10,000 office fit-out for the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Point Project has expanded rapidly in its four short years of existence, opening four offices and employing 56 staff in the process. The growth secured it appearances on the two most recent BRW Fast Starters lists.

Initially partnering government contractors Spotless, the company began to chase its own work when government spending in Canberra froze with the election of the Rudd government.

“One of the most difficult things is that when you’re tendering to government departments they often look for three years of financials, which is just impossible when you’re starting out,” Bilston says. “We consciously went to market to become specialists in project management – that’s all we do and we make sure we do it really well and invest in staff and processes to continue to do it better.”

Bilston believes the company made a couple of key decisions early on that enabled it to balance stability with rapid growth. The first was to focus on providing a complete building and construction project management service, from feasibility studies through to project delivery, rather than straying into associated areas such as surveying. The second was to appoint a board with experience in the building and construction sector to give the company strategic advice.

The third was to attract great staff by offering a flexible, family friendly workplace, a policy recognised by their appearance on the BRW Best Places to Work rankings in 2009 and 2010.

“We realised that in order to create a valuable business we would need to have staff we could trust to run the business whether or not we were there,” Bilston says. “Each of the offices needs to be able to run autonomously and that means we have to have the ability to step away and trust people.”

If anything, Bilston and co-principal Michael Snare are preparing for the company’s rapid growth to continue over the next 12 months as a result of its recent appointment to the Defence Infrastructure Panel, which is the principal source for service providers used by the Department of Defence and other federal government departments.

However, Bilston says the company’s approach of working closely with customers to secure a preferred provider status in a number of industries has paved the way for opportunities in aviation, mining, education and healthcare and he is also optimistic about the next 12 months.

“We didn’t set out to be the biggest company or to be doing the biggest projects, we just set out to be the best in our specific area of project management,” Bilston says. “There are just so many opportunities opening up to us at the moment – there’s mining, healthcare, education – and we haven’t even scratched the surface of opportunities in the private sector, or working for state governments.

“We’ve got great people and great opportunities for growth.”

Company: Point Project Management

Founded: 2006

Founders/principals: Michael Snare and Brendan Bilston

Revenue 2008-09: $13.34 million

Growth 2008-09: 42.11 per cent

Track record:

BRW Fast Starters: 2010 (ranked 6); 2009 (ranked 11)

BRW Best Places to Work:

2010 (ranked 27); 2009 (ranked 16)

BRW

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