In 1998 Gavan McArdle's civil engineering firm won a contract to reinforce the old Cotter Dam wall, which was full of holes.
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The lead engineer and a director at his company Guideline, David Jones, suggested using helicopters to lift 30-metre long ground-anchor cables - which could not be bent or rolled - above pre-drilled holes in the wall. They engaged a big Russian double-rotor helicopter flown in from Papua New Guinea to do the job.
Stainless steel and prefabricated on site, each of the 45 cable sets weighed three tonnes and had to be hoisted 100 metres into the air.
The plan was to gently lower them to four men standing on top of the wall, who would feed them into 180-millimetre-wide holes through the wall and into the bedrock.
''We had laid the cables out on the ground in front of the site sheds,'' Mr McArdle said. ''When the helicopter came down to pick up the first one, he came very close and a site shed blew onto its side. Trees were coming down.
''I recall yelling, 'Stop, stop', as I had radio contact with the pilot. He was a great pilot. He said it was the second most terrifying job he had ever done. The worst was a rescue during the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.''
The now retired Mr McArdle is one of the characters in the ACT construction industry's centenary publication, The Master Builders That Built Canberra.
They pushed themselves to the brink, brawled with governments and unions, and wheeled and dealed through economic booms and busts.
The Master Builders Association's 200-page, hard-cover book - launched by Deputy Chief Minister Andrew Barr on Thursday night - features ''Sack 'em Cec'', a tyrant project manager who instantly dismissed anyone he didn't like, and a fearless Greek, Sotiria Liangis, developer of Manuka's Capitol Cinema. Mr McArdle recalls a dodgy tendering process. The tenders would close at 2pm and because the Canberra civil contracting industry was so close, by 2.02pm, there would be a ring-around to compare prices so builders would swiftly establish who was in the running for the job.
The day after tenders closed on a large government project, after prices had been shared between firms, one company announced they had put their tender in the wrong box and submitted it.
''Of course, their price was the cheapest and they won,'' Mr McArdle said. ''This was a very significant project for us and we really needed the work, so we got the lawyers involved and were eventually awarded the project.''
National developer John Hindmarsh recounts the MBA complaining to the Department of Interior in the 1970s about Canberra's weak economy.
''Get off your backside and do something about it,'' came the reply, which culminated in the Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Manufacturers and MBA forming the forerunner to today's Canberra Business Council.