BRISBANE Catholic Education’s Building Services has been awarded the 2012 President’s Prize from the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects.
The significant award was recognition for the value for money and quality of the educational facilities built under the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program throughout our community of schools.
During the funding program, the Building Services team delivered 119 P21 projects and eight Science and Language Centres across of Brisbane archdiocese.
Building Services manager Gerry Conway said he believed the President’s Prize was particularly notable because it affirmed the decision made when the program was unexpectedly announced to use traditional methods to deliver the projects in BCE schools.
“Unlike many other sectors that engaged project management companies or that brought full control into head office, we engaged architects or other principal consultants to work with each school and BCEO to define the best project for the school within the program guidelines, to fully document that project, and put it out to competitive tender,” he said.
“This arrangement took advantage of the professional skills of the architects or principal consultants to design functional and impressive buildings that gained best value for money through a very competitive construction market.”
Mr Conway said Building Services had used a project team approach for many years to deliver archdiocesan school projects.
He said it involved the architect, school principal and BCE building officer each bringing their particular expertise into a collaborative environment where decisions were made by consensus wherever possible.
“As most of our school principals had some prior experience with construction projects, we were able to extend the project team approach to all BER projects,” Mr Conway said.
“This enabled local input to be maximised in developing each individual project while ensuring that organisational and program objectives were honoured, and the best technical outcomes achieved.”
Mr Conway said the extreme competitiveness in the construction market at the time frequently delivered projects under budget, allowing additional enhancements to the planned project.
He said overall BCE schools were blessed by the BER funding.
“While schools in some other sectors were the recipients of some pretty ordinary facilities, BCE schools have achieved remarkable outcomes with a number of individual awards and an almost universal boost to their educational facilities that were scarcely a dream,” Mr Conway said.
“Everyone involved in the BER Program can rightfully feel proud of the outcomes at their own schools and across the whole archdiocesan educational network.”
