Project Coordination: Building company collapses under $20million of debts after 50 years in business - with $120million of projects now hanging in the balance

• Company collapses despite bulging orders
• 14 projects worth $120million up in the air 
• READ MORE: Award-winning brewery goes into voluntary administration 

A family-run construction company has been placed into voluntary administration just before its golden jubilee, owing creditors over $20million.

Project Coordination’s Directors informed staff at their Canberra and Wollongong offices that they had appointed RSM Australia Partners as administrators on Tuesday.

The ACT and NSW-based company has builds worth more than $120million now in doubt while future projects worth over $90million have been stopped in their tracks.

A majority of the company’s 67 staff, 38 based in the ACT and 29 in NSW, will be made redundant and receive a payout immediately.

The company was started in 1975 and specialised in the construction and management of public and private buildings, leaving the directors with a ‘soul-destroying’ decision to hand over the business.

Family-run construction company, Project Coordination (pictured, worksite) has collapsed during its 50th year in business owing creditors over $20million

READ MORE: Massive Australian company collapses owing $80million 

Father and son directors, chairman Paul Murphy and managing director Gavin, said they ‘agonised over this decision’ in a joint statement shortly after informing staff.

‘Despite seeing other construction companies collapse around us over the past year, we never thought we would be one of them,’ the statement reads.

‘We thought we had the means, forward order book, capability and industry goodwill to get through this.

‘Each of us has put substantial amounts of personal money into the company in an attempt to manage escalating labour, material and borrowing costs on fixed-price contracts with very tight margins.’

The statement revealed the company had exhausted a range of options to raise capital last Friday, describing the situation as ‘unsustainable’.

Mr Murphy, who was one of the company’s original 25 employees, said he was devastated by Project Coordination’s collapse.

‘The economic and regulatory environment that building companies are working in now is more challenging than any other I’ve experienced in the past 50 years,’ Mr Murphy said.

‘Worse than the recessions in the 1980s and 1990s and the Global Financial Crisis in 2007/2008. Nothing has been as bad as this.’

Project Coordination bow out of the industry having previously delivered on over 900 projects across the country worth more than $2.5billion.

The company leaves 14 worksites across the ACT and NSW, worth over $120million, in limbo and a further $90million in future, unrealised projects (pictured, worksite)

RSM’s Jonathon Colbran, Frank Lo Pilato and Brett Lord will oversee the near-future of the company.

A statement released by the financial and advisory accounting company said work on 10 sites in the ACT and four in NSW had been halted prior to their appointment.

The 14 worksites are at ‘at various stages of construction, from design and early works to some nearing completion’.

Mr Colbran said the company had been hindered financially by ‘losses incurred from fixed price contracts combined with escalating subcontractor, supplier and operating costs’.

An initial investigation by RSM identified ‘more than 200 creditors’ who are still owed by Project Coordination to the tune of over $20million, a majority of which had been brought on less than two months ago.

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