Logan Mullaney in Colorado in front of a bridge InQuik is replacing after it was washed out. Photo: InQuik.
Like most country-raised children, Bruce Mullaney learned to improvise quickly while helping his parents run 70,000 chooks and 300 cattle on their family farm.
“This is really where his innovative mind began, as he learned a lot of ways to fix things with fencing wire and whatever else was lying around the farm,” his son Logan said.
That creativity on the farm in the Hunter Valley has taken Bruce and his family on an extraordinary journey from Goulburn, around Australia and to the signing of a huge contract with United States steel giant Commercial Metals Company, which has a sharemarket capitalisation of $US6 billion ($9 billion).
A builder in the Southern Highlands, Bruce had a farm in Goulburn for about 20 years.
“We never relied on the Goulburn farm for income, as Bruce was working as a builder,” Logan said.
Bruce and his brother-in-law Jim Howell adapted a modular system to speed up construction and found it was most effective for bridge construction.
“We developed a system for concrete bridges where we prefabricate the formwork and reinforcing steel into modular components,” Logan told ABC Radio recently.
On their Goulburn property ‘‘Eddystone Ridge’’ in 2016, they demonstrated their accelerated system and from there went to market and secured early-stage clients who were genuine believers in supporting Australian innovation and took on the first projects.
They built their first bridge in the Snowy Mountains for the Snowy 2.0 project, then more bridges across the Goulburn region and then all along the eastern states from Cairns to Colac in Victoria. They teamed up with an engineering company, SMEC (formerly Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation), formed after the completion of the Snowy Hydro Electricity Scheme.
Tragedy struck the family in 2018 when Logan’s brother Hayden, one of four sons running the business, was working out at the gym and collapsed and died of a cardiac arrest. That rattled the family, but they resolved to push forward and live as if he were still with them on their business journey.
At a trade show one day during a storm a Canberra, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Phil Aubin took shelter in their tent from the rain and spent the next 45 minutes chatting to Logan about what his family had been doing, establishing their business venture, InQuik.
Bruce Mullaney with his three sons Ryan, Ben and Logan, who are involved in the fast-growing family business that is set for more rapid expansion in the US. Photo: InQuik.
“I had a bit of insight from my background in Canada that a lot of the infrastructure in North America is degrading with time and the upkeep and replacement of it hasn’t kept up with the needs,” Dr Aubin said.
He said America’s crumbling infrastructure presented a huge opportunity for bridge builders. Some of his fellow surgeons have also invested in the company.
InQuik set up a US office in 2022 and became known as Aussie Bridges, according to Logan.
“When I had arrived in the US I had a similar chance meeting [to the one with Dr Aubin] with an Australian who had been living in the US for about nine years,” he said.
“He joined the team as the first InQuik US person to go out and market the product. Everyone picked up the Australian accent and product out of Australia and started referring to the system as ‘The Aussie Bridge’.”
Logan said InQuik was involved in projects all over the US.
“Now that we are partnered with CMC, we are expecting to see the system grow in a big way in the coming years,” he said.
“We are also expanding into other markets like car parks, data centres, buildings, jetties, etc., and providing many other solutions alongside bridges.”
Logan’s father, Bruce, came over to the US recently to meet the executive team of CMC.
But according to Logan, who is the president of InQuik, the family has had little time to celebrate the new deal.
“We are in a small town Tazewell in Virginia, three and a half hours away from any major airport,” he told ABC Radio.
“So we celebrated today by having a nice steak at the local restaurant. But we will be definitely getting together with the team and really celebrating this milestone, because it is one that will really drive InQuik forward in a very large trajectory.”
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