History
BMD was founded on relationships. As a family born company, this will never change - no matter how much we scale, diversify and globalise.
Established in 1979, just like the business itself, the name BMD illustrates our commitment to family values. Named after our founders, the acronym is a reminder of how a small family owned company has grown to become Australia’s leading integrated engineering, construction and urban development business. The B in BMD jointly stands for Beverley and Bevin – founder, Group Board Chairman and Managing Director, Mick Power’s sister and brother-in-law, who were both partners in the business for the first 12 months. The M stands for Mick himself, and the D for Mick’s wife Denise. For 45 years, BMD has backed our people to harness new opportunities, consistently growing and remaining strong in ever-changing markets. Today, BMD continues to be shaped by our people who live our values of family, driven, empowered and collaborative. From our longest serving employees to our newest graduates, our people are delivering collaborative infrastructure solutions that connect and transform communities. That’s the power of BMD.
Queensland built
Mick Power AM has served as the company’s Founder and Group Board Chairman for more than 45 years. He commenced his career with Leighton Contractors in 1969 as their first cadet at age 19, working on major infrastructure and mining projects as Manager of Central Queensland before rising through the firm to eventually become the Area Manager of the Gold Coast region.
Following a decade with Leighton and combined with the firm’s move away from smaller scale (sub-$200,000) contracts, Mick saw an opportunity to launch his own business, BMD, and utilising a $12,000 superannuation payment from Leighton, began undertaking lower-priced residential subdivision work with Hooker Rex (now known as Fraser Property Group), completing infrastructure and civil works across a number of residential subdivision projects.
For the first 12 months after BMD’s inception Mick worked tirelessly, at least six days a week, 12 hours a day. At the end of the first year, the company had made a profit of $800.
National growth
Though its early years, BMD concentrated largely around providing engineering services on a smaller scale in the residential subdivision space. The BMD Group has evolved and expanded rapidly, with our business now incorporating BMD Constructions, BMD Urban, Empower, JMac and Urbex - the sum total of which combine to provide our public, institutional and private clients a full-service offering across the property development, engineering design, transport infrastructure, civil construction and project management sectors.
By 1993, BMD was generating over $40 million of revenue and had 120 staff, with the business continuing its rapid growth, including a Major Properties and Major Projects division and the opening of new offices in Townsville in 1994, Darwin in 1997 and Melbourne in 1998.
Fast forward over the next two decades and under Mick’s leadership, BMD further expanded into New South Wales (2000), launched our own development company (Urbex, 2003), acquired construction firm JMac (2005), expanded into South Australia and the ACT (2007), Western Australia and Tasmania (2015), becoming truly Australia-wide. During this period, the business also launched an Industrial division in addition to growing out our service offering across its various business lines.
In November 2020, following 11 years serving on the Board and his entire career as part of the business, BMD went through a changing of the guard with Mick Power’s son, Scott Power, appointed as Chief Executive Officer, seeing Mick relinquish his role of Managing Director.
International strength - taking our expertise global
We set our sights on reaching new horizons through international expansion and in 2017, BMD partnered with Philippines-based Prime Metroline Infrastructure Holdings as Prime BMD, to deliver port and marine, road and highway, integrated resort and casino, renewable energy and community infrastructure projects, as well as expert project management services. In 2023, we entered the UK market, offering project management and advisory services that bring the expertise of our Australian business to the UK market across transport, rail and construction industries. Take a look below at how we’ve evolved into the business we are today.