Aveng gets a new chief executive on 1 October, and it will be the third person in the chair in nine months. Fraser Wyllie takes the job and a seat on the board that day, and David Simpson, who has run the group since the end of January, steps down as interim chief executive and as a director at the same moment. Scott Cummins, who had led Aveng since 2024, left at the end of January.
The appointment itself is not the new part. Wyllie was named chief executive designate on 24 August, and what the 21 September announcement settles is the handover date and Simpson's exit. Simpson stays available to him through the transition.
The man who fixes contracts that lose money
Wyllie is not a new face at Aveng. He joined McConnell Dowell, Aveng's Australian and New Zealand contracting business, in July 2017, running New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The job he walked into was a significant turnaround of underperforming projects, and Aveng says he has since grown that unit into a highly effective and profitable business. The group he now takes over has been building things since 1889 and trades through three brands: McConnell Dowell, Built Environs and the Moolmans mining contracting business.
The state of what he inherits
Stabilised is not the same as fixed. Revenue for the year to June fell 12.4%, to R26.4 billion, as infrastructure markets in Australia and New Zealand softened as expected. Gross earnings came to A$150.6 million, a margin of 6.5%, with every operating segment back in gross profit.
Operating earnings before capital items swung to a A$19.3 million profit, from a loss of A$60.4 million the year before. Cash went the other way. Operations paid out A$51.1 million more than they brought in, having been an inflow a year earlier.
For scale, the whole of Aveng is worth R544.75 million on the JSE, against the R26.4 billion of work it turned over last year.
McConnell Dowell goes into the new financial year with A$1.7 billion of work already in hand. Simpson's own assessment in August was that the group had made some progress but that significant work remained before that discipline was permanently embedded in the organisation. Wyllie gets 1 October to start on it.
