Richard Crookes Constructions, a privately-owned building company with offices in NSW, the ACT and Queensland, revealed its annual results on Friday.

The family-run operation said it had suffered a “small loss” of $6.8 million for the 2022 to 2023 financial year.

That was down significantly from the previous 12 months, where the business enjoyed $7.1 million in profits.

While for a smaller builder that loss amount would no doubt spell disaster, Richard Crookes Constructions’ size means it was able to absorb the losses.

It has more than 50 major building projects on foot, including extending the Art Gallery of NSW, with about 60 per cent of its work coming from government tenders. The total value of these projects is around $3.3 billion.

Richard Crookes Constructions believes things are looking up and that the worst is behind them amid an industry-wide crisis.

It has a 12-month pipeline of work that could be worth up to $15 billion, a company representative told news.com.au. This current financial year the business expects to break even, while by 2025, they expect to be back on track as a profitable entity.

In what can be considered a sign of the difficult period all builders are facing at the moment, this was the first time that Richard Crookes Constructions suffered a loss in more than three decades.

The company has been operating for 46 years, and hasn’t incurred a loss for the last 30.

Richard Crookes Constructions has picked up an additional $900 million worth of projects in the past four months, putting their financial woes firmly behind them.

It has completed 130 commercial developments, 130 industrial projects and more than 20,000 dwellings.

The business has more than 850 staff and hires about 3000 subcontractors daily, cementing its position as one of Australia’s biggest building companies.

It comes as a number of other construction firms unfortunately haven’t been able to weather the storm.

ASIC insolvency statistics show 2213 building companies collapsed during the 2022-23 financial year — a 72 per cent increase on the previous 12-month period.

The alarming trend has been blamed on a “perfect storm” of factors, including fixed price contracts, escalating costs, supply chain disruptions and tradie shortages.

The previous Morrison government’s HomeBuilder grant, which was introduced in June 2020 and handed out $2.52 billion to owner-occupiers who wanted to build or substantially renovate a home, turbocharged the sector.

More than 130,000 customers signed on for the program, with many tradies agreeing to the work under fixed-price contracts that soon became unsustainable as prices began to soar.

This year alone, news.com.au has reported on dozens of major builders that have collapsed.

Australia’s 13th biggest builder, Porter Davis, also collapsed earlier this year, placing 1700 projects and another 779 empty blocks of land in jeopardy across Victoria and Queensland, while more than 1000 unsecured creditors owed a whopping $71 million.

In one week in July, news.com.au reported on a new builder going into external administration every day.

A healthy construction industry is vital to a strong economy and ongoing growth, with the sector accounting for the employment of almost 9 per cent of Australian workers and 7.5 per cent of Australia’s GDP, according to CreditorWatch.