Adelaide builder fails with 100 jobs lost
A company working on the Festival Tower project at Festival Square has fallen into liquidation, with all 100 of the firm’s staff told they are losing their jobs.
Wake Concepts was working on Festival Plaza when it was placed into liquidation. Photo: Thomas Kelsall/InDaily.
Construction firm Wake Concepts, which specialises in building wall and ceiling linings, appointed Heard Phillips Lieberenz as liquidator “late” yesterday.
The Beverley-based company founded in 1982 was most recently working on Walker Corporation’s Festival Tower project with construction firm Built Pty Ltd, and employed approximately 100 staff at the time of liquidation.
Though Heard Phillips Lieberenz is still “in the initial stages” of investigating the reasons behind the company’s demise, insolvency specialist Anthony Phillips said the company has ceased to trade and “all employees will be given notice of termination today”.
“The liquidators most urgent task is to help employees get paid, and at first instance that will be by facilitating claims in the Government’s Fair Entitlements Guarantee Scheme (“FEG”) and the Building Industry Redundancy Scheme (“BIRST”),” Heard Phillips Lieberenz said in a statement shared with InDaily.
“The liquidator will be working with unions, FEG and BIRST offices to provide the assistance it can.
“In the longer term, the focus will be on realising as much as can be from the Company’s projects and investigating the cause of the company’s failure.”
Beyond the Festival Tower project, Wake Concepts said on its website that it was behind some of the more intricate building projects in Adelaide including the cross-laminated timber prefabricated panels on the Oval Hotel at the Adelaide Oval, timber wall framing and feature arbour works at Bremerton Wines’ cellar door, the Hallett Cove Boardwalk and timber work for Sofitel Adelaide and the Ashford Hospital.
Walker Corporation has been approached for comment.