A better way to…

Turn card payments into staff rewards

“We travel 17 million kilometres a year. Our fuel discounts add up”

This family business has grown into a construction empire – and loyalty has paid off in spades.

“You can come to us with a $50,000 civil project or a $1.5 billion underground tunnel connecting parts of a major capital city,” says Tony Hennessy, general manager of corporate services for BMD Group – Australia’s largest privately owned civil construction and urban land development business. Despite incredible growth – BMD has approximately $2 billion worth of jobs in the pipeline – the company is still a family business at heart. Founded in 1979 by Mick and Denise Power, the couple remain the sole shareholders and maintaining loyal business relationships is a top priority. “We’ve got third-generation excavating contractors that do 90 per cent of their work for BMD. We also have strong relationships with clients like Brisbane Airport Corporation – we’ve had rolling jobs with them for 15 years. And we have more than 100 members in our ‘20 Year Club’, where we reward and incentivise long-term staff.”

The gifts unintentionally return value to the restaurant group. When business development manager Dylan Jones travelled to remote parts of Thailand using Qantas Points earned through Qantas Business Rewards, he enriched his understanding of the cuisine, experiencing new flavours and traditional cooking methods. 

For McDonald, who is opening another restaurant in Ballina, NSW, business is changing fast, as traditional tourist areas attract sea changers. “It’s getting better by the day. Since COVID, more and more people are leaving cities for holiday areas like Byron and Noosa. The challenge is balancing our desire to expand while maintaining the integrity of what we have.”