The developer's complete consultant - 1980s
At the beginning of the decade, PT Tomkinson and Associates, now having expanded services with the addition of engineering became “the developer’s complete consultant”.
Retaining its Bendigo base, the business also established a wider presence across the development industry including the Melbourne office which now employed 100 staff – it was the heady 80s and there were large parties, long lunches and cars for everyone.
Paul Tomkinson was elected Mayor of Bendigo, and new engineer Rory Costello took on running the Bendigo office while Paul’s brother Mark Tomkinson opened a new office in Mildura, expanding Tomkinson’s reach from one end of Victoria to the other.
Significant projects included the Hidden Valley Resort and Country Club at Wallan, City Towers in Melbourne’s Southbank for the Far East Consortium, and large scale developments across the state establishing Tomkinson’s presence in the industry.
The 1980’s also saw the advent of computers across business and industry – word processing and computer aided design were the way of the future, and the company had to jump on board.
The days of hand colouring the survey plans for storage in old wooden plan drawers were on the way out, and the mobile phone, or “brick”, was on the way in!