AD CONTRACTORS – one of the Great Southern’s oldest and leading earthmoving and civil construction contractor – is celebrating a milestone with its 50th anniversary.
The Kelly Street-based family company has grown to become a big contributor to the regional economy, providing quality services in roadworks and construction; earthworks and land clearing; drainage, water and sewer works; crushing and screening; demolition and asbestos removal; truck and plant hire; fire control services; sand pads and structural fill; and land development.
The company is also a supplier of gravel, sand, limestone and rocks for projects of all sizes.
AD Contractors now employs more than 40 skilled, qualified and experienced staff in administration, mechanical services, fabrication, plant operation and truck driving.
The company is proud to be a valued supplier to many State Government departments such as the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions; Water Corporation; Southern Ports; and Western Power.
It has also performed many and varied duties for all the Local Government authorities in the region and privately-owned companies such as Arc Infrastructure, Fulton Hogan, Guidera O’Connor, Leicon Notley, Densford Civil and Wauters Enterprises.
Travellers around the region would be surprised to learn that AD Contractors has played a role in the construction of many key pieces of infrastructure including the Albany Marina, CBH Terminal, Albany Airport runway, Centennial Park Sporting Precinct and the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial.
AD Contractors’ most recent projects have included extensive roadworks all around the region, plus other siteworks at Albany Senior High School, PTA Bus Depot, Albany and Ravensthorpe Wastewater Treatment Plants and Walpole Airstrip.
Work on this scale requires a massive investment in heavy equipment, so the company’s plant includes 10 front-end loaders, six bulldozers, three graders, nine excavators, 10 prime-movers, 12 semi-trailers, three low-loaders, eight six-wheel trucks, two water tanker trucks, five rollers and two crushing and screening plants.
AD Contractors has certainly come a long way in the past 50 years. However, the true beginnings go back beyond 1970.
Brian and Yvonne Attwell were married in 1964, with Brian supplementing the couple’s potato farm income with earthworks on local blocks using his trusty 1954 International TD9 bulldozer which he had purchased in 1962.
Earthwork contracting become more of a focus than the farming, and the couple were soon operating as BV and YW Attwell from the backyard of their Chester Pass Road home.
“In the early days all the office work was done from our home,” Yvonne recalls. “I was there looking after our two sons and doing the admin. When the boys went to school, I was there in the morning and there when they came home at the afternoon.
“It wasn’t until a few years later that it became a full-time job and we moved to Kelly Street.”
“In 1970, we adopted the name AD Contractors and became a Pty Ltd company.”
There are various theories as to the origins of the name “AD Contractors”. One local wag suggested it stood for “After Dark” because he said: “As soon as it gets dark he nicks the machine to take it to another job.”
“There’s several stories about that, but at the time Brian just wanted to be the first one listed in the phone book,” Yvonne says. “We were doing a lot of work between Albany and Denmark so we hit on the AD, but it was never formalised for anything particular.”
Either way, there was a ready demand for earthmoving equipment in the expanding region, so there was soon the need for more than one small dozer.
“There was a demand out there and there was a need to provide, so within a short space of a few years we were already moving into dozers and excavators,” Yvonne says.
“We were the first ones in the district to have an excavator. Now they’re just part and parcel of every earthmoving company’s range of machines. Many people said: ‘Oh, they won’t work’, but they worked beautifully for Albany.
“There were really only the two contractors at that time – George Walmsley had already been operating before Brian really got into it, and then there was ADs.
“Our work mainly consisted of farming and Local Government. Ultimately a little bit of State Government started creeping in, so by around about the mid 70s to early 80s, we were doing a third farming, a third Local Government and a third State Government.
“It wasn’t contractual work like they go out for these days. It was usually plant hire and material supplies in the early days because most governments operated their own projects – like the Water Corporation and Western Power and so on.
“They all required machines to do work, so AD Contractors provided them. We were basically more a plant hire and a material supplies company in those early days.”
On farms, AD Contractors was employed to help with land clearing and building dams.
Later it evolved into more contractual work on subdivisions and roadworks.
The first two employees were bulldozer drivers Tony Ostigh and Peter Hamdorf who both gave long service to AD Contractors and their community. Both have now passed away, but their family members remain in the region.
It is testament to the family-orientated business that so many employees have been career-long members of the team. It was certainly evident to the Attwell family that Brian was fully committed to his staff.
“We only ever had two holidays,” Yvonne recalls. “One holiday was a week to Melbourne with the two kids in the back of the car. Brian didn’t even know these two kids were in the back seat fighting the whole way there and the whole way back.
“Then one year, his mother, Brian and I went to Switzerland and then a trip over to the UK to go to the JCB factory, but we got a phone call from the guy who was running the business for us to say he was leaving. He was going to gone before Brian got back, so Brian just rung up, got on the next plane and went home.
“Business was more important than the holiday or anything else for that matter, but he didn’t work to achieve personal gain, he worked to just keep the business operating and to look after the guys who worked for him.
“Brian had that ability to build a substantial operation without really knowing what he was achieving. He had no desire to have a big house, to have a better car or to go out to smart places.
“I don’t think he ever envisaged what it was going to grow to, and I don’t think he understood what it went on to become.”
Brian passed away in 2017. Some months later at Yvonne’s invitation, employees from the 1970s to late 1990s gathered to remember their old boss and good times they shared.
Much of their discussion would have centred around the voluntary work done by AD Contractors to help develop the city’s sporting facilities. The time, effort and equipment committed to facilities such as Albany Motocross Club, Harold Reid Paceway and Percy Spencer Racecourse can never be fully calculated.
Albany motorsport will always be reminded of Brian Attwell’s commitment to the cause, with its track carrying the name Attwell Park.
The same staff members were always quick to join the company’s efforts to assist during bushfires in the region.
“The number of times we were called out in the middle of summer because there was a bushfire and our people were needed,” Yvonne said. “They never stopped to ask where they were going to sleep that night and who was going to look after them. They just up and went.”
The same commitment still exists.
Today, Ian Attwell carries the baton of Operations Manager and Director of the company founded by his parents. His own start with the company came in 1984, soon after he left school.
He is thankful for the work of all his dedicated staff and their commitment to AD Contractors’ ongoing evolution. And he is particularly proud to have his son Jesse on the AD Contractors team – a third generation ready to add to the company’s rich history.
“People ask why I don’t retire, but in some ways I feel I already have because I love coming to work. It doesn’t feel like hard work to me,” Ian says.
“I want to carry on the legacy from Mum and Dad. It’s great to know that I can keep working and, if my wife Conny and I decide we want to go away for a while, we can do that because we have the right people working for us.
“We have a very good crew.”
AD Contractors celebrate 50 years of service