SUBIACO-BASED engineering consultancy firm Pritchard Francis has appointed land development experts Cory Johnson and Phillip Patterson as part of the expansion of its civil engineering practice.
Pritchard Francis managing director Arthur Psaltis said the company had been growing its civil engineering practice for the past eight years and now wanted to focus on land development.
“From a competition point of view we saw some opportunity there,” he said. “There are limited players in the land development market, and although it has been quiet over the last few years, we think there’s some pent up demand there ... so it seemed like a natural thing to do.”
Both Mr Johnson and Mr Patterson worked for a consulting, construction and contracting company previously and have more than 40 years of experience in land development between them.
Pritchard Francis has also promoted Paul Syminton to director. Mr Syminton heads the firm’s civil engineering department.
Mr Psaltis said the pair brought a wealth of knowledge to the Pritchard Francis team and would enable the company to fast track its expansion in that field.
“Bringing these two guys on board has really condensed our five-year plan to more like a five-month plan,” he said.
“They are very well regarded and known in the industry and they will generate opportunities for us that would have otherwise taken four or five years.”
The company has been doing much of its land subdivision projects in the state’s north-west and recently opened a Broome office to better service the area.
“We opened up our Broome office four months ago. We are doing a lot of work in the north-west in areas like Kununurra and Derby, so Broome was an obvious strategic location for us,” Mr Psaltis said.
“Not to mention, there were very few people in the market up there that we typically compete with and no-one really servicing those areas at that level.”
Mr Psaltis said he was looking to recruit more staff to support Mr Johnson and Mr Patterson and double the size of the firm’s civil engineering practice.
“There are few firms offering the service in the land development area and we have a very good reputation, do very good quality work and translating that into land development work would be well received in the marketplace,” he said.
