WHEN he took over as managing director of Decmil Australia six months ago, Ray Sputore recognised an opportunity to take his 30-year career in a new direction with the growing engineering and construction company.
Mr Sputore’s three decades in the business included nine years as general manager at Leighton Contractors during a time when Leighton underwent significant growth.
He had spent 28 years as general manager at Transfield Construction before that.
Mr Sputore said the move to Decmil came about because he was at that stage where he wanted a new challenge.
“At a company like [Leighton], the interface with the public and shareholders is limited,” Mr Sputore told WA Business News.
“In reality what I wanted to do was to get into corporate management in a bigger way.
“Here was an opportunity to take a growing business and shape it and make it in a bigger way.”
Decmil recently announced a 24 per cent increase in net profit to $23.5 million for the year to June 2011, and the company is focusing on achieving a further 20 per cent growth.
Mr Sputore said his role was to consolidate that growth for the ASX-listed company.
“There are certainly some challenges around sustaining growth,” he said. “The challenge is around maintaining [Decmil’s] culture as we grow.”
When Decmil started out it was run by the Criddle family in Karratha; the company now has a market capitalisation of about $240 million, is based in Osborne Park (with plans to move into a new headquarters in that area in January), and has 1,000 predominantly fly-in, fly-out workers on the books.
Previously known as Paladio, the company changed its name to Decmil in 2009 because of the success of the construction part of the business bearing that name.
The Criddle family remains intimately involved in the business. Denis Criddle is the company’s chairman and holds more than 17 per cent of the stock, while Scott Criddle is CEO and is also on the board.
Decmil’s recent projects include construction of the workers’ accommodation at the Warrawandu Village near Newman for BHP Billiton Iron Ore, which will be completed in 2012 and a contract to install a second camp at Fortescue Metal Group’s Christmas Creek operation.
Woodside is one of its major clients and Mr Sputore said Decmil had managed to secure further work on the back of construction work at Woodside Petroleum’s Pluto LNG project.
He said the project had developed over the company’s three-year involvement.
“Our objective is certainly to get significant work outside of the completion of [the project],” Mr Sputore said.
He said work was under way on developing Decmil’s brand and rolling-out ‘culture initiatives’ as the company grows.
“There’s an incredible amount of passion within the business around the brand,” Mr Sputore said.
He said the company was well-connected in the recruitment market and was getting a lot of referrals from employees, but was also making sure it strategically invested in people.
“A lot of effort is going into planning … people are coming off work and we’re allocating them to new projects,” Mr Sputore said.
“The biggest thing in our life is all about planning. If we get sufficient time to plan, the job will go well.”
Decmil is also pursuing more opportunities in civil work as part of its growth strategy, which at the moment makes up 15 to 20 per cent of its business.
The majority of its work, 62 per cent, is in accommodation while the balance is in non-process infrastructure.
Mr Sputore said there had been a shift in the design and construction industry where some of the larger resource companies were no longer using engineering, procurement & construction management groups for design and construction work.
He said while this could be an advantage for design and construction companies, it would be more critical to project delivery.
“We see it as a way to accelerate the project…it is more about risk mitigation and accelerating timelines,” Mr Sputore said.
With the current resources and LNG booms, Mr Sputore said client requirements had gone from being strictly price driven to capacity, with the absolute priority being around getting product to market.
Decmil Australia will move into new seven-storey premises in Osborne Park by January 2012.
