Multiplex boss on billionaire John Roberts, leading a construction giant, and setting the record straight on its union ties

When John Flecker arrived at the Mosman Park mansion of Multiplex’s late billionaire founder John Roberts, the last thing he expected was that his prospective employer would conduct the interview wearing a silk dressing gown.

But there Roberts was on Saturday morning in 1987, standing atop the winding staircase in his pyjamas.

Multiplex chief executive John Flecker.Credit: Trevor Collens

“It was like Jack and the Beanstalk,” Flecker told a packed lecture theatre at his alma mater, the University of Western Australia, on Wednesday night.

After Roberts bounded down the stairs to conduct a short interview on the couch, Flecker – then a third-year engineering student – was told to start Monday.

Flecker maintains it was serendipity that landed him a cadetship at the construction giant he now spearheads as global chief executive officer, a perk of sharing a flat with a fellow engineering student who happened to be a friend of the Roberts family.

But Pritchard Francis chief executive Arthur Psaltis, a former peer-turned-interviewer of Flecker, told the audience he was plucked from the class because he was the stand-out student.

In a rare public address, Flecker laid bare his journey from cadet site engineer to chief executive of Australasia and then to the top job at the company Roberts founded in Perth in the 1960s.

Multiplex has since completed more than 1100 projects across operations in Europe, the Middle East and Canada.

But Australia remains its stronghold, with the lion’s share of its $US100 billion worth of work having been completed here, from Optus Stadium to Fiona Stanley Hospital, and Edith Cowan University’s new city campus.

Flecker attributed the company’s success to its structure and lessons over its journey from an entrepreneurial venture to a publicly listed company and then a subsidiary of Canadian multinational investment giant Brookfield, which spent $1.1 billion acquiring the Roberts family’s controlling stake after the death of its founder in 2006.

Almost two decades on, Flecker said Roberts’ “can-do”, “go-getter” attitude was still ingrained in the company’s DNA, but was now balanced against the commercial and financial discipline that came from being part of a large listed corporate entity.

Unlike Roberts, who he described as a clear leader, Flecker likened himself to an orchestra conductor of regions he said effectively operated as standalone businesses.

Flecker was quizzed about long-held speculation Multiplex had benefited from a deal with the unions, a claim he vehemently rejected.

He said the company took a pragmatic approach to dealing with the powerful Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union representing the majority of workers across its Australian sites, but conceded that was guided by the leverage they had and the cost of industrial action.

“Some say we must have the union in our pocket and that we’re only successful because we must have a deal with the unions. We absolutely don’t, and I don’t know what that deal is,” he said.

“The law is clear in Australia, the unions have a right to represent workers, and they have lots of rights, and we cannot deny them access.

CFMEU members protest in Sydney on Tuesday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“They also have leverage, and they know they can disrupt, and it’s very, very expensive for work to stop, and in my view, you have to deal with them, and you have to be pragmatic.

“There are no dirty deals; we fight hard, and we actively dispute as much as anyone else, but deep down, I don’t see the relationship with the unions as being any different to that we have with our subcontractors and clients.”

But he did raise concerns about the publicity concerning claims of corruption, coercion and bikie infiltration in branches on the eastern seaboard that had led to the federal government’s forced administration in August and nationwide protests.

“The vision we have seen on the TV in the last few months of thousands of big, strong men shouting up and down the Terrace isn’t really a great image for parents whose children might consider a trade,” he told the crowd.

He was frank about the company’s challenges, including the infamous Wembley Stadium project in London in the 2000s that saw Multiplex lambasted over delays and cost over-runs that resulted in a shareholder lawsuit and reputational damage.

Flecker said the success of the stadium the company built for the Sydney Olympics, coupled with Roberts’ desire to “show a few lords the colonials could build a stadium”, informed its decision to take up the project.

But despite the fallout, Flecker said the stadium now stood as a symbol of the company’s resilience.

“We could have walked away, but we stayed and finished the job,” he told the audience.

“You want to know someone’s going to finish something, and what better test than a project that really puts you through your paces?”

Flecker also laid bare the company’s journey in and out of the Middle East and India, something he pinned on political shifts, economic and safety issues and deemed difficult but necessary to ensure better earnings and a safer operation.

“When you make decisions around growth, it takes a bit of humility to say that we’ve tested that, and it’s not right and make that call to retract and back out, rather than standing your ground and being dogmatic about it,” he said.

He delved into the company’s decision to shelve a move into infrastructure services and maintenance it hoped would enable a foray into lucrative work in WA’s resources industry.

Flecker revealed Multiplex was mid-way through pricing a processing plant for Gina Rinehart-led miner Roy Hill when it retreated following what he described as a boardroom “epiphany” around the same time a rival had encountered issues.

He declined to address that company by name, but appeared to be referring to John Holland’s trouble-plagued move from road and rail to hospital infrastructure.

The Multiplex boss also detailed how the changing climate was altering its operations, from the pricing of contracts amid increasingly volatile weather to ensuring clients had a pathway to lessen the carbon impact of their build.

Flecker couldn’t bring himself to crown one project as his treasured, something he compared to picking a favourite child.

But he had a much easier time isolating what he loves most about his job, which he believes everyone in the Multiplex business can resonate with.

“It’s the feeling of driving down [St Georges Terrace] with the kids in the car and telling them you built that. They think you did it with your own hands and that the blisters are from the bricks you laid building it, and then, they grow up, and they roll their eyes at you,” he told the audience.

“It’s the sense of achievement from that physical legacy in the community in which you operate.

“These are real structures standing there that people are living in and using, and that’s something that really resonates with our staff.”

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