McConnell Dowell celebrates 50 years of business growth

Media Release 21 September 2011

McConnell Dowell celebrates 50 years of business growth and innovation

McConnell Dowell announces its fifty year anniversary of the company launched by cofounders, Malcolm McConnell and Jim Dowell.

In a year of innovation where the Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin as the first man into space, 1961 marked a launch of a different kind across the other side of the world in New Zealand with the formation of McConnell Dowell, which was to become its own success story for ambition, drive and engineering excellence.

McConnell Dowell is a major engineering, construction, building and maintenance contractor delivering infrastructure to the building, mining, oil & gas, power, petrochemical, social and public infrastructure, transport and water sectors. The Group has a broad construction offering with complete multi-discipline capability in building, civil, fabrication, electrical and mechanical works and are engineering and construction specialists in pipeline, tunnelling, marine and rail construction.

Founded in New Zealand, McConnell Dowell is now an international company owned by Aveng with a strong balance sheet and average revenue of two billion. McConnell Dowell employs approximately 7,500 personnel worldwide with projects throughout Australia, Asia, New Zealand, the Pacific and the Middle East.

Malcolm McConnell passed away in 1995. Co-founder, Jim Dowell, said at today’s fifty year anniversary event in Christchurch that he was extremely proud of the company that Malcolm and he established.

“We were ambitious from the start and determined to take on the big engineering challenges.

With the courage to ‘take things on’ that hadn’t been done before, one of our first projects was to detonate Auckland’s aging Panmure Bridge from an old Harbour Board floating crane.

The next project we targeted was even more complex. McConnell Dowell won the contract to design and build an offshore water cooling system for Marsden Point Power Station. Our design solution was a world-first in marine technology and we made headlines in the international engineering and construction publications,” said Dowell. Roger McRae, General Manager of McConnell Dowell New Zealand, is a twenty-five year veteran of the company himself. He says over the past fifty years McConnell Dowell has continued Malcolm and Jim’s vision to construct projects to world-class standards, whatever the challenge.

“Our philosophy is ‘built to last’. We were one of the first companies to pioneer sustainability and acting with the future in mind is firmly imprinted in our DNA.

We bring creative construction to all our projects and key to our business is what we call our ‘portable’ management skills. Our clients benefit from our experience, whatever the project, be it a major motorway or a complex marine outfall.

We are proud of all our achievements which have seen us win the New Zealand Contractors’ Federation Supreme Award for the last four years in a row,” said McRae. Current projects for McConnell Dowell include the Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild which will rebuild roads, sewerage, water supply pipes and parks damaged by the September and February earthquakes over the next five years; NZTA’s Waterview Connection which is the largest capital roading project in New Zealand to date; and Contact Energy’s Te Mihi Geothermal project which replaces the 52 year old Wairakei Power Station with a new power station at Te Mihi which will be powered with steam from the Wairakei steamfield and produce enough renewable energy to power up to 350,000 homes.

McConnell Dowell celebrates its 50 year anniversary with two events which will be attended by clients and employees, past and present, with company speakers including co-founder Jim Dowell and CEO of McConnell Dowell Corporation, David Robinson. The first will be held in Christchurch tonight at the TelstraClear Club at the North Hagley Park Events Village with keynote speaker, Hon. Gerry Brownlee, Minister for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, and includes a special performance of Roger Hall’s Rugby World Cup comedy, C’mon Black.

The second will be held in Auckland next Thursday at the Auckland Museum and includes keynote speaker, Sir Don McKinnon, who served as Commonwealth Secretary- General for eight years from 2000 to 2008 following 21 years in New Zealand politics.

- ends -

© Scoop Media