Founded in Adelaide in 1932 by the Alexander and Symonds families, the multi award-winning company is one of the nation’s leading and longest serving surveying consultancies with a myriad of major and smaller projects that have helped shape the SA landscape.
Since 1973, the company has practised as a private limited company with 11 employee shareholders and with shares offered to valued employees.
Alexander Symonds managing director Glenn Hordacre heads a team of 87 surveying industry specialists located in offices in Adelaide, Mount Gambier and Whyalla in SA and Horsham in Victoria.
“We are by far the biggest survey operator in South Australia and have been at the forefront of some of the most significant major projects undertaken in the state,” Mr Hordacre said.
“However, we recognise that no assignment is too small or too large and we have been privileged to support clients that range from homeowners requiring a new boundary fence through to larger and longer-term projects such as the AAMI Stadium redevelopment and everything in between.”
Mr Hordacre said the practice consults to a breadth of public and private sector clients, most of which are involved in mining, infrastructure, property development, energy and construction.
Its range of surveying services provides clients with solutions in areas that include land development, precise engineering, infrastructure, laser scanning and licensed surveying.
Alexander Symonds has been a force on projects that include an engineering survey for Adelaide’s South Road upgrade, the construction survey of the Noarlunga to Victor Harbor Road and other roads and highways in SA and Victoria.
It has been involved with major land divisions at West Lakes, Golden Grove, Mawson Lakes, Playford Alive and others and in some cases it can take up to 15 years for a new suburb to be developed.
It continues to work on the former Cheltenham racecourse site, 10 kilometres from the city, where 1,000 new residential dwellings are being constructed.
Alexander Symonds has also had a relationship with Housing SA for more than six decades and for each of the past 16 years it has carried out more than 50 one, two and three lot land divisions for the Department of Families and Communities.
Since 2006 following a successful tender it has been surveying consultant for more than 60 individual projects at Techport Adelaide at Osborne, the world-class naval industry hub, and the centre where Australia’s next generation submarines will be built.
Alexander Symonds prides itself on being a generational leader and has been at the forefront of advanced technology development and implementation within the surveying industry.
“We were one of the first companies to use GPS (Global Positioning System) and high accuracy laser scanners to deliver expert surveying services to our clients,” Mr Hordacre said.
“We have invested heavily in state-of-the-art surveying equipment and led the way with the application of 3D modelling.”
This is a tool that has become vital to its work, such as the recent project for the Urban Renewal Authority at Tonsley Park, in Adelaide, where a 61 hectare manufacturing site is being transformed into a mixed-use precinct that will include business and employment initiatives, education and training opportunities, residential, retail and recreational facilities.
Since 1999 it has been completing a full topographic survey of the Adelaide Convention Centre and surrounds, maintaining a complete 3D survey for presentation to engineers.
It has also undertaken 3D marine mapping surveys in New Caledonia and New Guinea, provided expertise and new technologies for overseas aid programs in Yemen, the Philippines, and Nauru.
Alexander Symonds’ international work also includes its engagement by an Adelaide firm that required its 3D expertise in helping with a specific shape of infrastructure required for London’s Millennium Dome.
This achieved the Institution of Surveyors Australia (ISA) National Excellence Surveying Award in 2000 and the SA divisional award for the same project, adding to its ISA South Australia Excellence in Surveying Award in1999 for its work within the Sydney Casino.
The company has been racking up acknowledgements ever since. In 2004 it was Consultancy of the Year at the Urban Pacific Award Presentation for work on the Westwood urban renewal project – an $800 million State Government project for Housing SA that provided affordable housing within five combined suburbs northwest of Adelaide. It also won the 2007 Urban Development Institute of Australia Award for Excellence winner for involvement with the Holdfast Shores Community Land Titling project.
Its use of 3D dimensional control surveys and analysis to assist steel fabricators Manuele Engineers in the measurement and fabrication of the roof structure for the Southern Stand at the redeveloped Adelaide Oval won the award for Technical Excellence at the 2014 SA Spatial Excellence Awards.
For the past 13 years, Alexander Symonds has engaged the Nexia Adelaide office for its advice regarding compliance, ATO audits, FBT and all accounting matters.
“The firm’s partners have provided excellent advice, negotiations and guidance through our major business restructuring, which has included significant shareholder movements, new and exiting shareholders, changing our bankers and undertaking business revaluations,”: Mr Hordacre said.
“Their advice and guidance was also invaluable during the period when our long-standing managing director, Jim Curnow, stepped down.”
