How Sydney’s crane kings helped build the nation
Since 1920 the ‘Men from Marrs’ firm have lived by the motto dare to be different, but can they pull off a remarkable fourth generation?
Sydney’s Marr family has at least one thing in common with the Australian business royalty of the billionaire Pratt family.
Each Easter they both holiday at the luxurious Sheraton Mirage Resort on the Gold Coast.
Gordon Marr recalls watching the late Pratt family patriarch Richard Pratt holding up the bar there in the years before he passed away in 2009.
“We used to sit down and have a chat with him. He was there with his $200 glasses of cognac,” Gordon jokes, adding that he also saw Anthony’s son Richard at the Sheraton over Easter this year.
Like the Pratt family’s Visy paper and packaging operation is in manufacturing, the Marr family’s Marr Contracting crane business is also a third-generation family-run Australian-owned company that has built its success in a hands-on part of the economy.
Since 1920 Marr cranes have worked on many important projects that have shaped Sydney and the nation from their crane yard at Sefton in western Sydney.
Known as The Men from Marrs, they set up a crown in Martin Place for the Queen’s Coronation in the 1950s, assisted in the clean-up of the Granville train disaster in the 1970s, were involved in the construction of Sydney Opera House in the 1960s and, most recently, Crown Sydney.
Over the past 15 years they have diversified into the resource sector and in 2008 entered their first overseas market, Qatar. They now have projects in Europe, the Middle East and the UK.
In November 2019, Marr embarked on its most ambitious project to date: the construction of the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey near Gallipoli, now the world’s longest span suspension bridge.
“We’ve got our best years ahead of us. In terms of the growth that is out there, it is just fantastic,” says managing director Simon Marr. His brother Gordon is Marr’s technical director.
“Really our growth is probably limited by how much risk we want to take and what sort of capital is available to us to expand the business. But I think the opportunities for us far outweigh our current capacity.
“Traditionally, we’ve always been pretty conservative around bringing anyone else into the business. I think the opportunities that are out there for us at the moment probably lend themselves to exploring those options.”
While he declined to comment on financials, the group’s last annual report lodged with ASIC showed Marr Contracting made $64.7m in revenues for the year to June 30, 2022.
It reported a loss of $5.4m versus a small profit a year earlier, largely because of increased finance costs due to higher interest rates.
In 2015 the international business contributed 5 per cent of revenues. Next financial year it will be 25 per cent and growing.
“For these particular machines we have, which are the largest tower cranes in the world, we started pushing the product internationally and it really just took off. We’ve had a big focus on the UK, we’ve spent a lot of money investing in that region and it’s really starting to pay dividends for us,” Simon says.
One of the things that most excites the family about the industry is how developments in technology, and particularly artificial intelligence (AI), allow companies like Marr to gather real time lifting data.
“We are now able to see how efficiently cranes are being used and how they are interacting with the overall project schedule. It’s the missing link in driving productivity, project scheduling and safety even further for clients,” he says.
Life lessons
In 1926 Gordon Robert Marr was just 16 when he built his first crane, a four-tonne capacity “backender” affectionately known as No. 1.
In 1970 his son Gordon Ernest Marr took over and now his grandsons, Simon and Gordon John, are running the business.
Gordon John was instrumental in the development of many of the firm’s fleet of general construction and heavy lift luffing cranes.
“I couldn’t wait to get out of school and get into this. My whole life all I wanted to do on the weekends was to go into work with dad,” he says.
Simon, who joined the firm in 1988, took over as managing director in 2000.
Their father had started in the family business in his late teens and began driving cranes for Marr in his 20s, before working his way up to general manager and then managing director.
In the 1970s he built upon The Men From Marr’s culture of doing things differently instilled by his father that has become the cornerstone of the business.
“The lessons dad taught us in constantly striving to innovate, think differently and do things better every time are very much ingrained in our culture,” Simon says.
“His motto is, ‘You’ve got to have something that others haven’t got.’ That’s definitely what we’re known for in our business, both in Australia and internationally, in the way we approach a project and the way we develop a crane solution.”
Simon says his father’s other great teachings were even more simple. One was to simply “get out of bed every day, go to work and work hard”.
“Success will follow you if you do that. The other thing he has always taught us is honesty. Be honest and be true to yourself. There are many ways to measure success but it is not about how much money is in your bank account. It is how you hold yourself, treat your staff and treat your clients.”
But perhaps most importantly, he says his father’s greatest gift has been leaving he and his brother alone.
“He is like, ‘You boys are running it, it is your turn. The successes or the failures that come out of it, that’s your making. It is not about what has happened. It is about what happens going forward’,” Simon says.
Their father officially retired in 2000 but still takes an active interest in the business in the same way their grandfather, Gordon Robert, did upon his retirement decades earlier before he passed away in 1998.
“Dad’s relationship with his father was very similar to the relationship we have with dad. We talk to our father most days. He’s a sounding board for ideas. He will give us thoughts. But he certainly doesn’t say, ‘You must do this’,” Simon says.
“I saw that with him with his dad. It’s a great thing to be able to have a mentor like that who can reset your thought patterns or give you a different idea of how to approach a situation or an investment or whatever you’re doing, and let you still go off and make the ultimate decision.
“Our grandfather was just a larger than life figure in our life across all our family and also across the industry. When we first came into Marr, we were dad’s sons but we were more-so our grandfather’s grandchildren.”
The secret sauce of the modern day Marr Contracting is the relationship between Simon, who is 53, and Gordon, 57.
The former calls the latter by the nickname ‘Boof’.
Gordon jokes that there were so many Gordons in the business, “so everybody needed to have a nickname”.
They are good mates and understand their respective positions and strengths in the business.
“We say to each other, ‘That’s what you do and that’s what I do.’ We just make it work. I don’t care about titles, although I understand people need them. I respect what he does here, but I don’t look at him as the managing director of the company. I just look at him as the guy I’ve worked with all my life. We get on, mix things up and off we go,” Gordon says of his brother.
Simon says technically his brother now has no peer in the country when it comes to his knowledge of cranes.
While they are deeply conscious of carrying the Marr name, they don’t see it as a burden. They both had to learn the business from the ground up. There were no free rides or rights of passage.
“Some people used to throw things at you saying ‘You are the boss’s son’ or whatever. I would just reply ‘, Yeah, I am and I’m lucky to be that.’ I didn’t ever see it as a burden, I thought it was a fantastic opportunity. No one could ever say we didn’t take full advantage of it and give it a red hot go,” Simon says.
“We’ve proven that by where we have taken the business. It’s a very different business now, it’s much bigger, it’s been hugely successful and I think we’ve got the best years ahead.”
Unsung hero
Gordon Ernest Marr celebrated his 80th birthday on a luxury chartered sailing yacht on Sydney Harbour in 2021 with 24 members of his family.
But the unsung hero on the voyage that day was his wife Margaret.
“She’s been there for us all the way,” her eldest son Gordon says. “She’s put up with some of us more than others and she’s just been a great person.”
Simon describes his now 83-year-old mother as a “tough as nails country girl”.
“She’s been such a tough woman. In any family there are always turbulent times and this business has been in different positions, especially when we were growing up. She was the absolute rock. She was the one that kept the family together.”
A few years ago the family engaged in what Gordon colloquially calls a succession-planning “death talk” during one of the their Gold Coast Easter sojourns.
It resulted in their father transferring shares in the company to his children.
Completely coincidentally, Simon and Gordon’s wives fell pregnant at the same time two decades ago, so two of their children both turn 24 later this year.
“My wife was terrified that we were going to have a son before him. We ended up having a daughter and he had a son and they were born 10 days apart,” Simon jokes.
In 2018 Gordon’s eldest son, appropriately named Gordon Andrew, began as apprentice rigger at Marr, making him the first fourth generation employee.
His father was overseas working when he cheekily contacted his uncle to ask for a job.
“He was at school doing the HSC and that afternoon he rang me,” Simon recalls with a wide smile.
“He said ‘I’m just on the bus on the way to the office. I finished my last exam today and I was wondering if I could come and start working with you tomorrow?”
Gordon’s younger son Daniel also joined Marrs this year.
Simon has two daughters who are not in the business. His only son, who finished the HSC last year, is doing a gap year in the UK.
“I’m not precious about what they do. I think the most important thing for them is to be happy. If they decide they want to come and work with us, and if there’s a spot for them, then we’ll bring them in,” Simon says.
“But the rules that apply for anyone who works here apply whether they are family or not.”
The Covid-19 pandemic was a reset period for Marr, where Simon, Gordon and their father thought plenty about the ideal structure for the business.
If a remarkable transition to the fourth generation occurs in the coming years, it will simply be a bonus. For now, honouring the amazing Marr family legacy will be about delivering results.
“We are about to go through an incredible phase of growth. We are focused on winning and delivering work at the moment and growing the business,” Simon says.
“We’ve spent a lot of money investing in business development and pushing into new markets. Now it’s actually time to start delivering on that.”
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