Millar Merrigan’s Multidisciplinary Model 60 Years in the Making

It’s the backbone for the firm’s growth into a successful multidisciplinary consultancy, he told The Urban Developer.

Merrigan’s father founded the business in 1966 with a friend after spotting a gap in surveying services for Melbourne’s growing eastern suburbs.

The single-discipline practice based in Croydon has since added civil and geotechnical engineering, planning, landscape architecture, building design and structural engineering, with offices in Gippsland and Yarrawonga.

“There’s a real benefit in having planners, surveyors and engineers, the full range of capabilities, under one roof, or at least people you know and trust, and who know how to work together,” Merrigan said.

“Having a broad range of services in-house does not mean we believe we need to undertake every aspect of every project.

“What it does provide is a deep understanding of the issues, opportunities and constraints across multiple disciplines.

“This allows us to work more effectively within consultant teams, engage the right specialists where required and provide informed project leadership throughout the development process.”

That experience means the firm can manage a project across the full development lifecycle, from feasibility and planning through to engineering, surveying and delivery, rather than developers coordinating each stage separately.

▲ Millar Merrigan managing director Simon Merrigan: It’s about building trust through delivery.

From the high country to the regions

Dinner Plain alpine village, in Victoria’s High Country, is among the firm’s best-known projects.

There, the consultancy worked as surveyor and planner alongside architect Peter McIntyre from the 1970s, over roughly two decades of staged development.

Merrigan, a trained landscape architect with a long-standing interest in water-sensitive design, said combining that background with engineering let the firm do “some pretty cool things” at Dinner Plain, work that earned a stormwater industry award for master planning.

“Probably one of the key areas from a sustainability point of view is dealing with stormwater and using stormwater as a feature in the landscape rather than just an engineering solution that puts it behind a fence,” he said.

“One of the innovations we have incorporated into our designs are floating wetlands, where you use the vegetation as a water filter and a good visual element. It’s useful in terms of the efficient use of land.”

Regional Victoria is a significant growth area for the practice, with the Gippsland and Yarrawonga offices continuously adding work to their pipelines, even through the Covid downturn that stalled many metropolitan projects.

Individual regional towns typically have between 10 and 50 lots delivered annually, compared with the thousands of lots delivered across Melbourne’s major growth corridors.

However, regional growth often benefits from more consistent underlying demand and can be less susceptible to the market cycles that influence larger metropolitan land supply markets. 

Yarrawonga is currently home to the firm’s largest active project, in what Merrigan said is another sign that regional demand is holding up.

▲ Dinner Plain, near Mount Hotham, was developed in stages over roughly 20 years, with Millar Merrigan as surveyors and planners.

Schools are a regular part of the firm’s workload, where integrated planning, engineering and design services are particularly useful, alongside hospitality projects such as restaurants and cellar doors in the nearby Yarra Valley.

Land lease communities round out the mix, a model Merrigan says stacks up for developer clients on both affordability, delivery and community grounds.

Relationships built over decades

Many of the group’s client relationships have lasted for years, in some cases across multiple generations, alongside long-standing working relationships with local authorities, contractors and other consultants.

Continuity of that kind is part of what Millar Merrigan offers developers choosing who to bring onto a project. With authorities, relationships take time to build.

“Over time you get to know more people and have more connections, and so that helps,” Merrigan said.

Where staff who worked on earlier projects are still in place, Millar Merrigan can draw on that history. Expertise also matters, including recognising when a view cannot be supported and, if a dispute arises, knowing how to bring it to a head and reach an outcome.

Relationships with other consultants have also helped the firm grow. A small structural engineering company and a couple of small land surveying businesses have joined the firm through takeovers, mostly via connections with principals who knew the firm and wanted to retire.

As for developer clients, Merrigan said the firm’s role runs two ways.

“We work for developers, and so we look to enact their visions, but we also have the opportunity to help shape the vision and community building,” he said.

Trust built through delivery

What makes a development endure, in Merrigan’s view, has little to do with scale or technology.

“It’s rarely any one thing, it’s attention to detail across everything that goes into shaping a place,” he said.

Quality of finish and considered design give residents pride in where they live, he said, and that pride is what keeps a community thriving long after a project has been handed over.

For Merrigan, successful delivery is proven over decades rather than at handover, and he can point to projects delivered years ago that are still functioning as intended.

Six decades on, the firm’s director is the founder’s son, and it still points to its track record as proof of what it does.

Integrated disciplines, long-standing relationships and projects that hold up years after handover add up to a consultancy that developers can trust and return to over the long term.

It’s evidence, Merrigan said, that matters more to developer clients than any pitch on paper.

“We go back to projects we did 25 years ago and can still see how well those communities are working. It’s building trust through delivery,” he said.

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