Construction engineering company RSK Group announced the addition of infrastructure solutions provider Pensar Infrastructure Group to its family of over 175 environmental, engineering, and technical services businesses.
This move furthered RSK Australia’s ambitions to grow its presence eight-fold by 2025 and expand to northern Queensland, Australian capital territory (ACT), and south and western Australia.
Pensar has experience in solving challenges relating to process water infrastructure, non-process water infrastructure, specialist infrastructure, infrastructure rehabilitation and electrical infrastructure.
With climate change, population growth and ageing infrastructure posing risks to Australia’s communities and industries, ensuring adequate water supply and reliable infrastructure is crucial. According to the Australian Infrastructure Audit 2019, much of Australia’s water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure are reaching the end of their lifecycles and are no longer fit for purpose, with a majority reaching a substandard state of repair by 2030.
Headquartered in Brisbane, Pensar will support infrastructure needs across government departments, regional and metropolitan councils, and the private sector.
With a projected annual turnover of AU$200m for FY2023, Pensar is the largest acquisition by RSK outside the UK. Pensar is the sixth business to join RSK Australia in 18 months, aligning with the latter’s rapid growth strategy to further strengthen their expertise and increase staff to 2,000 in the next 24 months.
Mark Haydock, managing director of RSK Australia, said: “The addition of Pensar to RSK is a major step forward in line with our geographic diversification strategy. Since our inception in 2021, RSK Australia has acquired six strong businesses that contribute over 10% of the RSK Group’s global revenue — a testament to the opportunities that abound in Australia’s buoyant market. With the combined expertise of Pensar and RSK’s global businesses, including water expert Binnies and the RSK centre for sustainability excellence in Singapore, clients will benefit from the innovative solutions to meet Australia’s future infrastructure needs.”
Pensar has worked on projects over two decades for clients such as Unitywater; Department of Defence, Queensland’s transport and main roads; Urban Utilities; Brisbane city council; city of Gold Coast; Hunter Water; TasWater; and WaterNSW, among others.
Among these is the AU$100m Wamuran irrigation scheme — a recycled water scheme involving the construction of a 22km pipeline network and pumping infrastructure to deliver some 2.6 gigalitres of class A water per year, providing year-round water security to Wamuran farmers through the reuse of water and diversion of discharge from local river systems. The upgrade for the Cunnamulla wastewater treatment plant saw infrastructure improvements to meet environmental discharge targets, including integrating a medical-grade incinerator, composting facilities and solar panels — a landmark project for water and wastewater infrastructure in regional and rural Australia.
Other recent projects include the Coombabah cogeneration plant, an energy-efficient facility that operates on renewable energy, and upgrades for the Boera and Homestead dams within the Toorale national park to enable flexible water flow management through the Toorale national park, supporting environments within and downstream of the park. The Homestead dam bridge was installed in 21 days — from foundation to completion — using the award-winning InQuik bridging system.
Karl Yunker, managing director of Pensar, said: “Together, RSK and Pensar have the opportunity to [lead] in the design and delivery of water infrastructure projects, meeting the water security needs of Australia’s growing population.”
