National builder PBS Building has abandoned its sites; Gold Coast and interstate projects unfinished
An award-winning national construction company has abandoned development sites, leaving huge projects across Australia in limbo, including on the Gold Coast. See their Queensland-wide projects list.
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An award-winning national construction company has abandoned its development sites, leaving projects across Australia in limbo, including tower and townhouse developments on the Gold Coast.
PBS Building is part-way through Marquee Developments’ 19-level Shoreline at Old Burleigh Rd in Surfers Paradise, and sold-out Serenity Reserve townhouse project at Helensvale.
On Monday morning, both sites were locked up and deserted aside from security officers. Calls to the company’s offices were going unanswered.
Subcontractors at some PBS sites began removing equipment on Friday, while the company’s website was removed from public viewing and its social media pages deleted.
PBS Building is based in Canberra and has offices in Sydney and Brisbane, however its past and present projects are scattered from Sydney to Hervey Bay.
The group has delivered residential, commercial, industrial, retail, office, apartment, aged care and mixed-use developments along the east coast and directly employs 190 people.
Buyers in Keylin Group’s Serenity Reserve are also in limbo, with PBS partway through the build of an 86-townhouse project at Helensvale.
The sold-out Serenity Reserve site was quiet over the weekend and on Monday morning, apart from security staff stationed at the entrance.
Scaffolding was present on most of the project’s townhouses, which appear to be in various stages of completion, some not yet watertight.
Of the seven Queensland projects that were listed on the PBS website, the Bulletin can confirm four have been completed. These included the Hervey Bay Wetside Water Education Park, Botanica Residences in South Brisbane, Nikenbah’s Latitude25 RV Lifestyle community and The Melbourne Residences in South Brisbane.
Several people with connections to the builder expressed shock about the news on social media.
“Yep I watched them lock it up this morning. Was supposed to work, had no idea,” one woman said.
A man who claimed to be the site engineer at Shoreline described PBS as a “great company to work for”.
“I hope they can get the assistance they need from developers,” he said.
A woman said her partner was due to start at the Serenity site on Monday, but received a text from the recruitment company at 5pm Sunday telling him not to come in anymore.
“Recruitment working on a Sunday was the first red flag,” she wrote.
PBS Building’s parent company, PBS Property Group, is directed by founder Ian Carter, 60, and CEO Adam Moore, 47, who both live in the ACT.
PBS Property Services logged $294.8m in revenue last financial year, but recorded a loss of $2.66m, down from profit of $3.27m the previous year.
It had assets of $102.2m and liabilities of $98.3m with borrowings going from $5.96m in FY21 to $22.8m in FY22. It employed 190 staff.
The Bulletin has attempted to contact multiple PBS executives.
PBS Property Services has seven shareholders, with one substantial share held via a company directed by former general manager Warren Ahrens, 59, and held by his wife Leah Ahrens.
Through another series of companies, Mr Carter owns the same number of shares as Ms Ahrens.
A company directed by CEO Adam Moore is also a shareholder.
Company documents show Mr Ahrens stepped down as a director of the group’s Queensland company on March 1 this year.
The company is licensed for maximum revenue of $30m-$60m in Queensland, with QBCC records showing it had 177 jobs worth $52m in 2021-22, but just 23 jobs worth $9.3m so far this financial year.
While a password has been placed on the company’s website, cached pages say it was founded by Mr Carter and his brother Peter in 1989 and expanded after working on the Sydney Sydney Olympic Village a decade later.
The website said PBS was “an award-winning and recognised industry leader” with “rock-solid corporate governance”.
“Robust finance capabilities are critical for so many facets of our work with partners,” it said.
“Whether it’s capital restructuring, acquisition due diligence, joint ventures, equity partnerships or long-term commercial planning, we have it covered.
“Our liquidity, bonding capacity and the high quality of our pipeline projects assures our ongoing growth while remaining resilient to macro-economic challenges.”
PBS’ HERVEY BAY LINKS
PBS has had multimillion-dollar projects in Hervey Bay including the WetSide water park.
In 2011, a row broke out in the Fraser Coast Regional Council over the awarding of one major contract with some councillors concerned it was not a local company, given its Canberra address.
Cr Les Muckan voted against a $5m tender for stage one of a cultural centre in Hervey Bay.
While PBS does have an office in Pialba, Cr MucKan said the company's head office was based in Canberra, so he voted against its bid when there were local companies available as the profits would end up in the ACT.
But deputy mayor David Dalgleish said PBS had a long, successful history on the Fraser Coast.
"PBS has completed $42.7 million worth of construction on the Fraser Coast, including the WetSide water park," he said.
CFMEU WADES IN
A union has ramped up calls for national security-of-payment-reform laws after an award-winning construction company PBS Building abandoned development sites.
The CFMEU urged the federal government to implement nationally consistent security-of-payment laws in the wake of the building giant “teetering on the edge of ruin”.
CFMEU incoming national secretary Zach Smith said: “Too many subcontractors and workers simply don’t get paid when companies collapse.
“It is unacceptable people are not getting paid for their hard work. Subbies and workers being ripped off when businesses are liquidated is one of the biggest problems in our industry.
“No more buck passing. No more talk. We need an effective national security of payments regime that stops workers being ripped off.”
Mr Smith said the union would do “everything in its power to make sure workers and subbies” received money owed to them, but laws were needed to guarantee this.
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