"We had 12 projects, eight were doing okay and four were pretty much under water," Bayside managing director Craig Hopcroft told the Financial Review on Tuesday.

"Two of those were terrible projects. That's all you need these days – you only need a couple of bad jobs when margins are so tight."

The company's website shows projects underway include the 22-apartment Alumuna development in Port Melbourne for HGW Projects - the penthouse of which reportedly sold for $5.6 million - the 26-unit Port One Eleven project in Port Melbourne, the 23-unit McKinnon Place project for developer Citiplan in McKinnon and the $30 million, 30-apartment Dorcas Street project for Piccolo Developments in South Melbourne.

The builder's collapse follows a string of earlier failures, triggered by fixed-price contracts entered into by companies keen to grow their order books at a time when costs are rising, triggered in part by the demand for skilled trades on Victoria's slew of public infrastructure projects.

The Alumuna penthouse, Johnson Street, Port Melbourne, which reportedly set a suburb price record. Supplied

Australian Securities and Investments Commission figures show insolvencies in Victoria jumped to 43 in April, the last month available, from 26 in March and their highest level since 46 last July.

This happened even as total construction insolvencies fell to 115 in April 2018 from 121 in March and 137 in July 2017.

Another Victorian builder also doing medium-sized residential developments in inner-suburban areas, Project Group went under in March. Its debts had more than doubled to $45 million by May from the original estimate. A month earlier, in February, builder Watersun Homes also went into voluntary administration, with the loss of 90 full-time jobs.

Initial assessments showed that Bayside Construct owed up to $13 million to external unsecured creditors - mainly subcontractors - and had a $6 million facility with secured creditor CBA. It was not immediately clear what the shortfall on the $6 million facility would be.

In addition, the company had staff entitlements of about $750,000, mostly comprising annual leave entitlements and redundancy payouts, administrators said.

The first creditors' meeting will take place next Tuesday, with the second due in the second week of August.