Road works company a casualty of pandemic

YATALA-BASED road works group Intelligent Infrastructure Solutions has fallen into voluntary administration with the chairman blaming COVID-19.

Administrators Matthew Joiner and Bruno Secatore, of Cor Cordis, were appointed to i2S, which is headed up by chairman Clayton Glenister, on Monday.

A first meeting of creditors is due to be held on June 10.

Mr Glenister, who is managing partner of MBA Lawyers, said it was forced to pull its crews from four work sites in Victoria and NSW because it could not guarantee the health and safety of its employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The health and safety of our employees had to take paramount importance and in fact there were some COVID-19 confirmed cases on those work sites,” he said.

Mr Glenister said these were cases where its workers had to work in confined spaces with no social distancing.

“It was completely impractical.”

He said this imposed a “massive” financial cost to the company, which has 40 employees.

Mr Glenister would not say how much was owed to creditors, however he said all superannuation and wage entitlements had been paid out to employees.

“At this stage our financier is in preliminary discussions with a potential party interested in acquiring the business. That will be under the control of the administrator now but we hope that may result in some of the creditors being paid.”

The administration follows i2S being issued a statutory demand in the Supreme Court by Gold Coast electrical subcontractor Civex for non-payment of $127,000.

The payment relates to work completed by Civex for i2S on the Logan Enhancement Project.