Educational

Edith Cowan University, School of Nursing & Midwifery

– The objectives of the project were to have spaces that mirror imaged a hospital to provide a better learning environment to accommodate the increased enrolments. – Seven existing wards were refurbished and reconfigured to create new wards complete with medical gases, drug rooms and prep areas that would accommodate more students plus allow for them to be monitored by teaching staff. – Two new hi-fi wards were created with control rooms with one-way mirrors to create a controlled examination and assessment area, two midwifery rooms were refurbished to allow for teaching with birthing pools plus the installation of drug rooms and dirty utility areas and two lecture spaces were refurbished. – In addition, the teaching staff’s offices, which also accommodated the store room, breakout area and library was reconfigured and refurbished to make better use of the space plus allow for more staff offices. – During the course of the works, inclement weather unveiled several serious leaks within the roof space that were entering into the works zone putting pressure onto our programme. Upon examination, we also discovered that the fire rating in the cavity walls was not compliant. Our flexibility and collaboration with the ECU properties and maintenance teams allowed for us to repair the damage without impacting our programme.

Working to a highly accelerated programme, from initial tender period to pc being less than four months which included three weeks of design and works over the christmas period, we successfully met the non- negotiable pc date to accommodate the students who were scheduled to be completing their courses in the spaces. The 1,600m2 refurbishment over 6 zones required detailed programming and our superior ohs standards as the floor is also host to another school and surrounding rooms, plus corridor, had to remain fully operational at all times during the university’s operating times for external events they were hosting in their spaces as well as examinations and teaching.

Client

ECU

Project Designer

DesignInc

Services Consultant