Commonwealth Games tech provider liquidated, owing $174k

Service provider AchieveIT, best known for its work on the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games data network, has been liquidated with $174,012 owing to unsecured creditors.

Liquidator James Downey of JP Downey & Co said in a report for creditors that Ingram Micro was left $43,123 out of pocket. Melbourne businesses Jato Professional and JHP Solutions were both owed over $25,000, while technology advisory firm Applied Architecture was left $16,000 short.

Individual creditors included co-founder and managing director Scott Coleman for $21,321 and former business development manager Horry Walker, owed $9,000.

AchieveIT was a managed services provider born out of consulting firm Australian Project and Consulting Services, both owned under the holding entity Big Iland Pty Ltd.

The reseller, based in the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Notting Hill, closed its doors on 30 September. Customers' support agreements were transferred to SSDL, a business in the neighbouring suburb of Wheelers Hill.

"We had a long-standing relationship where [AchieveIT] used to be the customer for certain things," SSDL director Sebastian Maciejewski told CRN. "We took over [the customers] from October 1."

Maciejewski declined to reveal how much the customers were purchased for, but did say that four members of AchieveIT's operations staff had also moved over to his company.

At the AchieveIT creditors' meeting, the liquidators presented a four-page statement from directors and co-founders Coleman and Craig Dennis describing the company history and the circumstances that led to its collapse.

Coleman and Dennis said that after a "highpoint" in January this year, six events conspired to put insurmountable pressure on the company:

• cancelled health sector work worth between $100,000 and $300,000 of revenue 
• prematurely terminated $2 million public sector project
• terminated deal to establish a "centre of excellence" for a "large government department" 
• in-sourcing of existing Australian Moto GP and Formula 1 Grand Prix agreement, including an allegation of staff poaching 
• a "large statutory authority" terminating a $300,000-$400,000 contract due to a breach of procurement policies
• stalled engagement by "a large government client" costing the company between $100,000 and $300,000

"The combined impact of collapsed revenue projections coupled with the intense effort required to service these projects became unsustainable," said Coleman and Dennis. "After seeking advice from accountants PKF Lawler, it was reluctantly decided that Achieve IT (and therefore APCS and Big Iland) would cease trading."

CRN contacted both the liquidator and Coleman for comment but neither had responded at the time of writing. Both the AchieveIT email address and telephone number now redirect to SSDL.

AchieveIT listed Dell, Juniper, IBM and Cisco on its website as "strong business partners". APCS was founded in 2000, with AchieveIT set up as the managed services arm in mid-2007 after the success of the Commonwealth Games project. In 2012, the two operations united under the AchieveIT brand to become an all-in-one consulting and service provider firm, after an "unexpected exit" from the Victorian government eServices Panel that same year.