Burke & Wills Projects: From COVID startup to $40M+ trans-Tasman group in five years
Business name: Burke & Wills Projects
Location: Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Auckland
Burke & Wills Projects began in the middle of COVID with two founders, a laptop and a simple idea – fix venues properly and fast. Five years later, they operate four businesses, employ more than 120 staff across Australia and New Zealand and manage hundreds of jobs a day without drowning in spreadsheets.
“As soon as we started, we said, OK, how are we going to get this going for our business because it’s going to be one of the best tools for our integration with Xero, but also for our tracking. And it has been ever since.”
5 Offices
With 120+ staff across four businesses in ANZ
$40-$50m
Projects being delivered annually across ANZ
150+ jobs
Being managed by the maintenance division daily
About Burke & Wills Projects
Burke & Wills Projects delivers commercial construction, maintenance and facilities services with its own joinery manufacturing arm. From education and childcare to hospitality and retail, they manage everything from fast-turnaround maintenance to complete fitouts across Australia and New Zealand.
Teams: Construction projects, facilities management, maintenance, joinery, manufacturing, design, demolition & make good
Established: 2020
The challenge
Founder and Director Adam Hill had seen the consequences of poor maintenance first-hand. After years running hotels, nightclubs and live music venues, Mondays and Tuesdays meant patching everything together for the week ahead.
“I would spend every Monday, Tuesday with a team of guys going through repairing, putting walls back together, putting toilet seats back on, screwing stuff back on walls and trying to hold them together, getting the venues ready for the next week."
That experience revealed a clear gap – venues needed a specialist partner that could repair fast and properly. When COVID hit, Adam and his now business partner Todd Burke saw the moment to start a business built around that need.
They launched a maintenance division just as venues were scrambling to keep sites operational. As stimulus rolled out, work shifted from reactive repairs to major refits and new site builds. Within a few years, Burke & Wills Projects had expanded into a:
- National projects business
- High-volume maintenance and facilities division
- Dedicated joinery manufacturing factory
- New Zealand business supporting trans-Tasman clients
With rapid growth came complexity: four entities, five cities, 120 staff and hundreds of daily transactions.
“In maintenance alone we’re doing 150 to 250 jobs a day. Our accounts team processes 200 to 250 invoices and the same in bills daily. Without the right system, tracking that is almost impossible.”
Spreadsheets and gut feel were never going to keep pace.
What changed with Nexvia
Todd had already seen Nexvia replace spreadsheets at his previous workplace, so when Burke & Wills Projects got to a point where they could invest in proper systems, the decision was already made.
"We did start on spreadsheets because we started very simple and basic. But as soon as we could afford to employ that technology, Nexvia was the first thing we went to. It was a no-brainer."
Today, all four Burke & Wills businesses run on Nexvia:
- Burke & Wills Projects – fitout and construction
- Facilities & maintenance – high-volume reactive works
- Manufacturing – joinery factory and assembly
- New Zealand – projects and maintenance across the Tasman
For Adam, three areas matter most:
- Project management – consistent structure and visibility across every job and entity
- Assembly and manufacturing – controlling time and cost in the factory
- Financials – linking budgets, purchase orders, claims and invoices in real time
The same platform underpins each new business, ensuring one consistent way of working replicated across the group.
If Nexvia had been available back when Adam was redeveloping hospitality venues, he’s clear it would have transformed those projects.
“If I’d had something like Nexvia, it would have changed the dynamic completely. Back then I thought it was just me and an Excel spreadsheet.”
The Outcome
In five years, Burke & Wills has grown from a COVID-era startup to a trans-Tasman construction group delivering $40–50M in projects annually, supported by a high-volume maintenance division. They’ve opened offices in five cities, scaled to 120 staff and built four integrated businesses operating seamlessly on one platform.
The maintenance team alone handles 150–250 jobs per day, ranging from $500 callouts to $2,000 repairs. At this scale, financial visibility isn’t optional.
"The real-time tracking is huge. When it comes to contractor payments, sending purchase orders and making sure purchase orders line up with what they've invoiced - that's huge because contractors constantly add stuff in there."
Every purchase order is raised before work begins. Every invoice is matched back to its PO. Unapproved extras are caught before payment, protecting margins across all entities.
“Our team can invoice 200 to 250 invoices a day and process the same amount in bills. Without a system lining everything up, something unapproved could easily slip through. Tracking that manually would be almost impossible.”
For someone who once managed 11 hospitality venues and ran music festivals on the side, Adam knows chaos when he sees it. But this time, it’s different.
"What I'm doing now is pretty much a walk in the park compared to that - because we've got the right technology."
Why it matters
For Burke & Wills Projects, Nexvia is the operational backbone that supported their rapid expansion during one of the toughest market periods in decades. It gives them the tools to scale multiple businesses at once, strengthens accountability from site to factory to accounts and protects margins in real time rather than after the bill lands.
Even after five years, the team is still discovering and refining what Nexvia can do for their business. As they bring in heads of department across the group, those leaders are stepping deeper into Nexvia to explore reporting, pipeline tools and capabilities they haven’t fully tapped yet.
Four businesses. Five cities. One platform. And plenty of room left to grow.
Highlights
Replaced spreadsheets with one platform running four businesses, five cities and 120+ staff.
Manages 150–250 maintenance jobs a day with real-time visibility into costs, margins and approvals.
Linked projects, manufacturing and financials so every purchase order, invoice and claim lines up before payment.
Processing 200–250 invoices and bills daily without unapproved extras slipping through.
Created a repeatable operating model that supports rapid growth across construction, maintenance, manufacturing and New Zealand expansion.
Scaled from a two-person COVID startup to a $40–50M trans-Tasman group in five years.
get started
Contact us now for more information about our software and to arrange a free demo.
