| Hindmarsh
Hindmarsh | Setting the BENCHMARK
| Hindmarsh Over the years, Hindmarsh has successfully delivered over $3 billion worth of completed projects for satisfied clients.That track record is a result of their high standards, and their historic commitment to quality, integrity, innovation, and teamwork. The company was founded with a vision to be the leading property and construction company in Australia, and that vision drives everything they do. Today, Hindmarsh focuses on complex constructionprojects and real estate developments, as well as retirement services, parking operations, and capital management. They take a unique collaborative, personalised approach, and have built a portfolio of many
Hindmarsh | high profile and challenging projects spanning a wide range of construction sectors. Recently, Hindmarsh added the awardwinning ANU Chemistry Sciences Building to that portfolio. The $80 million Chemistry Building is the last stage of the $240 million Colleges of Science project at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. It comprises three storeys over two wings, and involved the refurbishment of an existing four-level building. Under their Managing Contractor arrangement, Hindmarsh became involved in the project at a very early date, when it was still in the conceptual phase. Because of this, they were able to provide buildability and costing feedback during the proposal and design phases. “There are benefits in doing that,” explains Gary Robinson, Project Manager on the new Chemistry Building. “It allowed us to set the goal posts and manage our risk. It resulted in more effective coordination and fewer variations.” Gary started his building career in Mel-
| Hindmarsh
Hindmarsh | SATISFIED STAKEHOLDERS -bourne. Over the years, he’s developed expertise across many different areas of the construction industry – much like Hindmarsh itself. He says he was attracted to the company due to their collaborative corporate structure, and for the way they support their employees. Including Gary, Hindmarsh had a team of 14 people on the Chemistry Building project. That team also comprised a Project Director, Services Manager, Services Engineer, Site Supervisors, Safety Supervisors, and Contracts Administration. According to Gary, Hindmarsh was the right company to deliver the ANU Chemistry Sciences Building due to their hard-won experience and expertise, as well as their focus on collaboration from the very beginning of a project’s life. “We pride ourselves on fully understanding the building construction process and what the end-goals for our clients are,” Gary explains. “We can provide valuable input that will ultimately achieve those end-goals
| Hindmarsh and satisfy everybody. We can build a facility that is fit-for-purpose, functional, and cost effective.” “We approach every job by considering every stakeholder’s needs and trying to achieve the right balance, so everyone is satisfied,” he says. “That’s what we always aim to do.” In this particular case, Hindmarsh has been working on the ANU campus for roughly 15 years, and had already built up a very trusting relationship with the client. They earned that trust – and that ongoing work – by conducting themselves with integrity, and ultimately delivering consistently successful results. According to Gary, Hindmarsh also enjoyed positive relationships with the architects and other design consultants on the project. They worked with them closely throughout the design and value management stages, where they respected their design objectives and collaborated to find solutions that achieved those objectives whilst meeting the client’s cost requirements. Later in the project, Hindmarsh contin-
Hindmarsh | ued to foster strong relationships with stakeholders. Gary says they tendered the job to only a select group of subcontractors, and he describes the relationships they formed with the winners as “very good.” “We only wanted to work with contractors that we had the confidence could deliver the project to everybody’s satisfaction,” he explains. The new ANU Chemistry Building was constructed within the “live” campus science precinct and encompasses 9,100 square metres of ground floor area (GFA). The refurbished ‘Birt Building’ encompasses 4,100 square metres. The total GFA includes research laboratories, high-tech instrument rooms, chemical storerooms, various workshop rooms for electronics and glassblowing, as well as offices, administration rooms, a seminar room, a drop-in centre, and general meeting areas. Each specialist research laboratory is distinct and contained from the others. Within them, Hindmarsh installed specialised INDUSTRY RECOGNISED
| Hindmarsh equipment including gas reticulation equipment, gas detection systems, NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) equipment, microscopy equipment, x-ray equipment, a gaseous nitrogen generation plant, and a helium recovery plant. The project also includes numerous environmental sustainability initiatives – including adaptive air conditioning, a rainwater harvesting and recycling plant, and a Blackwater treatment plant, which recycles water within the Colleges of Science precinct. The project’s innovative and aforementionednitrogen generation system also generates nitrogen from ambient air to supply the school’s research and teaching labs. Altogether, the newChemistry Building’s design meets the Green Building Council of Australia’s 5 Star Green Star rating. The project also includes a first-of-itskind common manifold exhaust system, which is connected to 132 fume cupboards. Under previous medical research standards, each fume cupboardwould have been ducted separately with its own exhaust point, which would have meant 132 exhausts on top of
Hindmarsh | the building’s roof – which would have been unsightly and expensive. To resolve that issue, the project team imported an American system called a “strobic fan” – “basically a big jet engine, really,” Gary says. That system was designed in such a way that each of the fume cupboards would go into a manifold, which led into a duct, which connected to one fan on the rooftop. “That system basically reduced 132 exhaust points on the roof into just four exhaust points of the roof,” he explains. “We had to sit and discuss that with the Australian Standards Commission, because it was an engineering design that hadn’t been achieved before.” As recognition for innovation like that, Gary received a 2014 AIB National Professional Excellence in Building Award, in the category for Commercial Construction $50 million to $100 million. Those awards are prestigious and highly sought after. They recognise leadership shown by individuals on challenging and complex construction projects, and reward innovation and excellencein particular – the kind of excellence consistently displayed by Gary and the rest of the team at Hindmarsh. “That’s recognition industry wide – and that award was national recognition, not just state,” Gary says. “We’re very proud to achieve that. It tells the story of our company
| Hindmarsh and what we can achieve.” According to Gary,the new ANU Chemistry Building “set the benchmark” for education and research in a facility of its nature. “It gives students the best facility possible to achieve their goals,” he says. “I’m very proud of that.” Gary is also proud of the project because of the challenges Hindmarsh faced on it – and the way they successfully overcame those challenges to produce an award-winning result. “We were always able to work through the issues and find an answer,” he says. “For every problem, there was a more-than-reasonable solution. We were tested, but the outcome at the end was exceptional. Everyone was satisfied with the end product.” FINDING SOLUTIONS
Hindmarsh |
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTYzNTg=