Buildcorp has successfully handed over the $150-million Santa Sophia Catholic College at The Gables in Sydney’s Box Hill after completing construction in record time using high volume prefabrication.
The Catholic Education Diocese of Paramatta’s new multi-storey, co-educational Kindergarten-to-Year-12 school will cater for up to 1,860 students and 130 full-time staff.
Designed by BVN Architecture, the college was delivered by Buildcorp in just 16 months due to extensive use of prefabricated materials and a high level of quality control.
Buildcorp’s team used an off-site prefabrication strategy and building information modelling to coordinate key areas, solutions that were developed to help achieve the architectural and pedagogical design aspirations as well as substantially reduce the on-site delivery time.
Buildcorp managing director Tony Sukkar AM said: “The innovative prefabrication strategy and game-changing partner collaboration enabled this project to be delivered swiftly with a very high-quality outcome.
“The most effective of-site prefabrication solution was developed for a range of building materials to reduce construction time and increase quality control and safety.”
Developing a design that offered four different façade types across 2,000 façade panels and 1,600 balustrade panels, the team helped realise the architect’s intent for curved, aluminium curtain walls that transition into balustrades and concrete decks.
Full-scale façade mock-ups were created to validate the quality of the design and performance and ensure they were weatherproof.
The prefabrication solution ensured that 70 per cent of the joinery was made off-site by Euroline, which sourced 100 per cent Australian-made materials for the joinery and interior panelling.
To manage supply chain capacity and risks, the structural steel prefabricated elements came from several supply chain locations within New South Wales.
Sukkar added: “The construction team delivered the project throughout the pandemic and used Buildcorp’s industry-leading safety system to proactively manage the risk.
“This, along with adaptive program management, helped to keep the project on track and minimise COVID-19 disruptions.
“As a result, Santa Sophia Catholic College opened its doors to students, teachers and the school community with much elation after Sydney’s lockdown restrictions were lifted.”
Santa Sophia students had an active role during construction of their new school, taking part in construction site tours, conducting interviews with the Buildcorp team, and developing their STEM project to get to know the new school layout.
Buildcorp developed ten construction milestone films that will be embedded in the school so students can learn more about how the school was built.
The college will be at the heart of a future town centre for The Gables community, where developer Stockland has planned to deliver more than 2,000 homes after acquiring the master-planned site from Celestino in 2020.
