Civil & Civic was an Australian construction company. Founded in 1951, it was acquired in 1961 by Lend Lease Corporation.
History
Civil & Civic was founded by Dick Dusseldorp in 1951 on behalf of Dutch building companies Bredero's Bouwbedrijf and The Royal Dutch Harbour Company as an Australian building contractor.[1] 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.[2]
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 & Civic to take on and manage the multimillion-dollar contract.[2]
Civil & 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,[3] Australia's first all concrete skyscraper (Caltex House),[4] and the world's first high-rise strata title apartment building (Blues Point Tower).[5]
In 1961 Civil & Civic was acquired by Lend Lease Corporation, but the company continued to trade under the Civil & Civic name, 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.[6]
In July 1999 Civil & Civic was rebranded Lend Lease Projects. After Lend Lease Corporation acquired Bovis from P&O in October 1999, the former Civil & Civic business merged with the former Bovis business to form Bovis Lend Lease.[7][6][8]
