'I'm devastated': Long-standing Canberra builder enters administration

Project Coordination met with employees in Canberra and Wollongong on Tuesday morning to inform them of the company's situation.

Most of the 67 staff members were made redundant and would receive "the majority of their employee entitlements immediately", the administrators said.

It is estimated more than 200 creditors are owed more than $20 million.

In a statement, the company's directors described the decision as "soul-destroying".

"Today we informed our staff of our decision and the painful reality that we would have to let them go," the statement said.

"They were emotional meetings and conversations. A quarter of our staff have been with us for 15 years or more, with many over 20 years."

Paul Murphy and his son Gavin Murphy said they had "agonised" over the decision.

RSM Australia was appointed as the administrators of the company on March 19.

The announcement came after Project Coordination's website and social media pages were inactive on Tuesday morning.

RSM Australia partner Jonathon Colbran said the company had 14 active building projects, including 10 in the ACT and four in NSW.

"All work on these sites ceased immediately prior to the appointment of the administrators," he said.

One of the company's Canberra job sites, the Sierra residential project in Narrabundah, was empty and locked up on Tuesday morning.

Paul Murphy, 72, was one of the original employees of Project Coordination when it started in Canberra in 1975.

"I'm devastated,'' Mr Murphy said in a statement.

"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 - worse than the recessions in the 1980s and 1990s and the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-2008," he said.

"Nothing has been as bad as this.''

Founded in Canberra in 1975, Project Coordination specialises in construction and refurbishment jobs in residential and commercial sectors.

The company expanded in 2000 with the opening of a second office in Wollongong.

Project Coordination has delivered more than 900 projects worth more than $2.5 billion.

The company's now deactivated website stated the group's ACT division had the financial capacity to run several $50 million projects at once and had recently expanded to include a custom home-build team.

The group's previous projects included the new NDIS office in Deakin, apartment developments in Greenway, Coombs and Forrest, and the Cooma Hospital redevelopment.

Project Coordination had completed a number of custom home builds in Canberra, including houses in Garran, Forrest, Deakin and Chifley.

An initial review of the company's books and records showed more than 200 creditors could be owed a total of more than $20 million. The majority of the debts were less than two months old.

Mr Colbran said the group had a pipeline of future work totalling about $90 million.

Despite this, they advised administrators they did not have enough funds to continue operating.

"Despite injecting a significant amount of their own personal money into the company the directors advised me that losses incurred from fixed price contracts combined with escalating subcontractor, supplier and operating costs had negatively impacted the company financially,'' Mr Colbran said.

"These numbers are preliminary and are likely to change over the coming weeks as we undertake detailed investigations into the company's financial affairs."

A first meeting of creditors had been scheduled for April 2.

Project Coordination is the latest business casualty in a string of construction company collapses, including PBS Building which entered liquidation in 2023.

In March 2023, Project Coordination managing director Gavin Murphy responded to the collapse of PBS Building and said he was saddened by the news.

He said the construction industry had faced challenges since COVID-19.

"Us and many of our subcontractors have been doing it tough," he said at the time.

"We've been fortunate enough to navigate our way through it and although things are still pretty tight, we look around and we see a lot of the community organisations doing it even tougher."

More recently, national builder Rork Projects entered voluntary administration, leaving dozens of ACT projects in limbo.

Cubitt's Granny Flats and Home Extensions, a 30-year-old ACT-based business, also went into voluntary administration in February.