Behind the Project: ECU City

Our strategic plan was to become the university of the future, help students achieve their potential. This is Perth's first comprehensive inner-city university. It will hold 10,000 students. It's also the new home of WAPA, West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. 66,000 square metres of footprint, 11 super levels tall, directly over the top of the Perth bus port. Eight state-of-the-art theatres. Then integrated some of the best AV in the world. To be that university which has transformed the city of Perth is quite extraordinary. It was done on a brownfields project, over the top and integrated into an existing bus station, and over the top of four train tunnels. So having two train lines and having the bus port in a place that used to be a wetland, the complexity that that drove. So the best place to build a campus like this, but the worst place to build on. We had to build alternative access arrangements, so for staging to enable the Perth bus port to operate during the whole duration of the project. We built six bridges over the top of a public space. It all incorporated a public realm of four roads around, either local or main roads. Stakeholder management was critical, BTA being the main one to ensure we could not disrupt them, but also achieve our construction goals. Some of the other challenges around some of the spaces and height that we had to build and span across, let alone some of the complex theatre spaces that we had to build. There was a 26 metre high shell beam construction over the playhouse stage area. That was a 21 metre open span beam design. The best example of our performance was how we dealt with the acoustics for WAPA. Underneath these theatres are two train lines. There was quite a bit of vibration that was coming up because a lot of the venues are also stacked. We had to consider noise transfer above, below and across the walls. The building is a box-in-box construction, meaning there's an outer structural box and then the inner box, which is what you see, which is the final finishes. One of the great multiplex initiatives is the Jumpstart program, a national initiative founded by multiplex women to bring young girls in high school through to get some hands-on experience in construction. So over the program, we reached 60 students. Not only have they seen the growth in the project, but they've also experienced a lot of growth in themselves. Over $100 million of the best either teaching education or broadcast or performance-based OV. 2,700 LEDs incorporated into a digital architecture façade, four-storey digital screen in the foyer and the world's best technology for broadcasting. As an engineer, I loved working on this project. Seeing the design progress, construction on site, finishes and being able to walk around some of these spaces to reflect back on what we've actually built has been pretty incredible. It wasn't easy, but a lot of people have grown so much on this project and we're now seeing that come to fruition. As a theatre kid, this is a very full-circle moment for me getting to actually build the theatres and I just know that all the performing arts students will love the facility. Relationships are everything when it comes to a big project like this. We worked collaboratively with ECU with a best-for-project attitude at all times. It was done safely, on time and on budget. And here's the outcome, this beautiful campus that's now home for ECU. And I just don't think that there's another builder in Australia who would have taken on and achieved what we've achieved here.