PE group Whiteoak engineers two investments in one deal – The Australian Financial Review

Growth equity firm Whiteoak has acquired stakes in NSW-based engineering consulting firm MIEngineers and its sister software company Benchmark Estimating Software.
MacDonald Group’s projects include WestConnex in Sydney.  Oscar Colman
Whiteoak managing director Lorcan Barden said the two businesses, both part of the privately owned MacDonald Group, would be run separately with their own management teams, strategic plans, funding and ultimately exit pathways.
Founders Robert and Lynda MacDonald would retain a minority shareholding in both.
Barden said the two deals completed last Thursday, and came after the MacDonalds hired Allunga Advisory to find a new private equity backer to help grow their businesses in Australia and offshore.
The MacDonalds founded MIEngineers, an independent consulting firm, more than 30 years ago. The firm provides cost estimating and design services to large public infrastructure and engineering projects in Australia and the UK, in a focus on motorways and roads projects such as Sydney’s WestConnex.
Benchmark Estimating Software, a SaaS product, was developed out of MIEngineers and is now used by more than 220 government and private clients globally. Together, the two companies have about 80 staff.
Barden said Whiteoak liked the two companies’ industry tailwinds, with big infrastructure construction pipelines in Australia and internationally, and particularly in the United States.
He said Whiteoak would look to add more people to both businesses, and would seek to turn MIEngineers from a niche player in Australian and UK roads into a broader group servicing a wider range of infrastructure projects and geographies.
Amy-Ruth MacDonald, of the MacDonald family, would continue to run MIEngineers, while the software business is run by Sydney-based Frank Prestipino, he said.
Corrs, KPMG and PwC advised Whiteoak, while the MacDonald family had Allunga Advisory, McCabes and KPMG in their corner.
It’s Whiteoak’s fourth and fifth investments from the firm’s $125 million first fund, which was picked up in a fundraising that closed in February.
The firm was set up by a group of former McKinsey & Co consultants and targets investments in software, healthcare, business services and consumer sectors. It has deployed about half of Fund I, Barden told Street Talk.
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