From humble beginning as a sole trader electrical business to winning multi-million-dollar defence contracts, Molloy Electrical Contracting Pty Ltd is a Northern Territory success story.
The company had been tendering for NT Government jobs, with some success, but wanted to expand into Defence work. They invested in training and development and hired new staff to build capability and expand into new industries.
MECNT had been an ICN subscriber for a few years when in 2017, ICN encouraged them to submit a proposal for a work package at Tindal RAAF Base. They won the contract and have since been involved in other Defence projects across the Territory.
“This was our first big introduction to Defence. We called it T1. We’re up to T25 now, so we’ve had a lot of jobs that have spring boarded from that,” Director Sam Molloy said. The Tindal contracts have been worth about $10 million to MECNT.
“We’ve also had work at Robertson Barracks, and we’ve got a big project going at Larrakeyah at the moment, which we started 12 months ago.
“Because we had experience in that area, it enabled us to get on to other Defence sites.”
The range of work packages at Larrakeyah is worth more than $8 million. The base entry alone is worth about $4.8 million and is the biggest single work package the company has taken on.
“And the only reason they took us on for that is because we had a track record at Tindal,” Sam said.
“When it comes down to a package worth millions of dollars, there’s not that many companies with Defence experience that would be able to take it on.
Working at Tindal, near Katherine, also introduced the company to some big players in the construction industry.
“We did a lot of other jobs for multi-national companies while we were down there,” Sam said.
While MECNT wins a lot of business through ICN Gateway, the reputation it has built thanks to that initial Tindal contract had led to direct contact from major project owners.
“Probably half our business comes through the ICN. Take them out of the picture, and we probably wouldn’t be doing such big projects. They definitely put us on the map,” Sam said.
“We go to a lot of information days, show a face to let people know we are still interested.”
The large Defence projects have also allowed MEC to employ more staff and grow its workforce to include administrative, project management and estimation experts, as well as a number of electricians experienced in high and low-voltage work.
“We’ve gone from a workforce on 8 to 10 people, up to about 35 people, including 8 apprentices,” Sam said, adding the company aims for 5-10 per cent Indigenous employees.
For more information, go to the MECNT website.