Civil and Civic - History

History

The Company was originally founded by Dick Dusseldorp in 1951 on behalf of the Dutch building companies Bredero's Bouwbedrijf of Utrecht and The Royal Dutch Harbour Company as an Australian-based building contractor. Its first contract was to supply and erect 200 prefabricated houses for the Snowy Mountains’ Authority which had been established by William Hudson, engineer of the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Hudson's greatest obstacle in the completion of the scheme was the provision of labour and materials. Without a resolution to these two problems the realisation of the project was doubtful. But 31 year old Dutch immigrant Dick Dusseldorp conceived a plan to prefabricate frames for worker housing in Finland, plumbing in England, ship materials via Cooma and recruit labour from the Netherlands to erect the homes. Dusseldorp established 'Civil and Civic' to take on and manage the multi-million-dollar contract.

Civil and Civic went on to become Australia's leading provider of project management services in the construction industry, delivering a number of landmark projects including Stage I of the Sydney Opera House, Australia's first high-rise (Caltex House), and the world's first high-rise strata title apartment building (Blues Point Tower).

In 1961 Civil and Civic was acquired by Lend Lease Corporation, but the company continued to trade under the Civil and Civic name for some time, also constructing the world's tallest lightweight concrete construction building (Australia Square), and the tallest building in the world outside North America (MLC Centre) at the time of completion.

In 1999 Lend Lease Corporation acquired P&O's Global Project Management Company, Bovis, rebranding the business as Bovis Lend Lease. The Australian operations of Civil and Civic were merged with the new subsidiary, effectively ending the use of the original company name.