Blackadder builds on its success

Balcatta-based Blackadder Group’s growing client base includes CBD high-rises, Goldfields and North-West resource projects, industrial complexes, including water treatment plants, freeway and rail repair, extension and modification, and offshore oil and gas facilities.

As well as supplying on-site ancillary and construction plant and equipment, including scaffolding, the group specialises in provision of skilled labour crews, tradesmen, supervisory staff, management teams and professional staff, including chefs, nurses and safety representatives.

Blackadder now even has a special purpose traffic and safety service division that offers the full range of traffic control within and around construction sites to ensure prompt access by site suppliers and security for pedestrians and passing traffic.

And this division’s services include provision of site and safety signage and acquisition of all required permits from relevant authorities and agencies.

This focus upon detail has made Blackadder a leader in service provision in a sector that hasn’t always been well catered for by its various participants.

Founded just eight years ago by Graeme Hearn and co-directors John Maddison and Joe Solomon, the group - which includes Blackadder Scaffolding Services, Woodman Services Pty Ltd, Construction Fitouts and GCS Rapid Access – more than doubled its turnover last year and management predicts revenue growth of at least 30 per cent annually in the next three years.

Blackadder’s client base is not focused solely upon Western Australia’s currently expanding resource and construction sectors.

Specialist Blackadder teams have worked in Darwin (Ocean Epoch Offshore); East Timor (Bayu Udan Offshore Hook); and Bass Strait (Ocean Bounty Upgrade and the Jack Ryan Offshore Facility) and a major Brisbane construction project is about to be added to its books.

Perth metropolitan landmark projects on which Blackadder’s teams have participated include: the Raffles development, Fremantle’s Maritime Museum, the Convention Centre, and the Swan River foreshore’s Bell Tower.

Specialist Blackadder teams are presently on the Esplanade and Roe Street ends of the $1.5 billion MetroRail project as well as at the William and Wellington Street intersection, among other works.

The company has a permanent or core workforce of 50 and presently has another 200 workers on its payroll. Fifteen of the 50 are leading hand supervisors.

It specialises in providing scaffolding operatives, drivers for tower and Tom Thumb cranes, rigger-dogman, steel erection and formwork teams.

All staff employees are multi-skilled, versatile and adaptable and Mr Hearn said this was an essential feature because of the varying needs of the construction sites and projects Blackadder had tendered for.

He said the secret to the company’s success was in the laying down of its business plan when he and his two partners started up.

All three foundation partners had worked as boilermakers in southern England before entering the Australian construction sector in the 1980s as casual workers.

“Although we moved away from boiler making, that early training was crucial since it taught each of us to understand and appreciate engineering, design and drawings,” Mr Hearn said.

“What we soon noted on construction sites was the existence of a range of inefficiencies that each of us was convinced could easily be overcome if these were properly assessed beforehand and engaged from the outset.”

This crucial observation convinced them that integration of labour and equipment hire was the way to go in overcoming avoidable bottlenecks that so often afflicted construction projects.

Mr Hearn said Blackadder was best seen as offering a contracting service that provided both workers and the necessary equipment.

With Blackadder’s core workforce being both multi-skilled and comprising of long-term or permanent employees each member is able to proceed on any site and work unsupervised.

“We pride ourselves on being able to offer clients high calibre experienced workers, from chefs to site supervisors,” Mr Hearn said.

BLACKADDER 

• Founded in 1996
• Supplies labour and equipment for construction projects
• Full time workforce is 50
• Part-time and casual workforce currently running at 200
• Increasingly focusing upon interstate and overseas construction projects