Wamberal Public School
SITE MANAGER - Mick Thompson
Building Company - North Construction
Project Manager - Gareth Stephens
Foreman - Adam Bosley, Driff Sutton, Rob Harding
VALUE - $14,000,000
DURATION - 52 weeks
CLIENT -TSA for Department of Education
ARCHITECT - EJE Architecture
Wamberal Public School is a K-6 primary school located in the suburb of Wamberal on the NSW Central Coast. The school is boarded by Lea Avenue to the north, Tumbi Road to the east and residential housing to the south and west with a total land area of 3.99ha. Current enrolments at the school total 726 and existing accommodation includes twenty (20) permanent teaching spaces, ten (10) demountable teaching spaces and associated core facilities.
The proposed scope of work includes:
Construction of a new two storey building to the south of the existing development (Block K);
Additions and alterations to three existing buildings (ground floor level only), including the administration and staff buildings (Block A), library (Block E) & Hall/OOSH area (Block D);
Construction of a new covered walkway spanning centrally between buildings (Block A & K);
Additional works have also been added to construct a new 41 space permanent car park.
School operations will continue as normal during the expansion and upgrade. Consideration is given to the construction activities and works will be staged to suit staff and student relocations. School holiday periods will be utilised for works through unconfined spaces.
The site has 3 frontages; Lea Avenue (Access to Admin Building – Block A), Tumbi Road (Access new Block K Building) & Aldinga Drive. Aldinga Drive will not be utilised for construction access. A temporary construction access road will be built from Tumbi Road to service the site of Block K.
LESSONS LEARNT:
The need to determine ‘what a good job looks like’ for all parties involved. With the builder (myself), the client, the operating school and the Department of Education NSW all having input and stakeholders to report back to, it was key to discuss what would take priority. With this project, the design was behind from the beginning and it was a major focus for the team. The Dept. ED had promised certain completion milestones to the community, and it was our job to work with the architects to select finishes or building techniques that allowed us to compete on time and budget. While challenging at times, it was enjoyable to have such a large impact on the design for buildability and efficiency.