Tassie trio build a winning reputation

THREE Tasmanian projects have been voted top of the nation in a prestigious awards ceremony.

The landmark Mona Pharos Building, the Lake Tahune, Frenchmans Cap project and a home built by Davies Constructions won key awards at the Master Builders Australia National Excellence in Building and Construction Awards in Adelaide over the weekend.

“It’s a great honour to have a project that wins on the national stage and to be recognised by our peers,” said Fairbrother general manager Kurt Arnold, whose company built the spectacular new wing of Mona that is cantilevered over the Derwent River.

The project, which won the National Commercial/Industrial Award $20 million-$50 million, took just 18 months to complete.

“It was an exciting, unique project to work on. There were challenges in terms of the speed with which we had to work, the complexity of the design and the detail in it,” Mr Arnold said.

“Then there’s the fact that the building is there to house artworks, but is also an artwork itself.”

He said the project was run by Fairbrother’s senior project manager Clinton Meade and project manager Phil De Jong.

“It was run by guys from within our existing workforce, which proves from a building industry perspective that we have the capacity and skills in the local industry to deliver highly complex projects such as this one,” he said.

Valley Workshop took out the National Environment and Energy Efficiency Commercial Building Award for the Lake Tahune, Frenchmans Cap project; and Davies Constructions won the National Project Home under $350,000 award.