The Department of Finance (DoF) awarded this project to ACorp Construction on a Construction Management Contract after a competitive public tender process. Our client (DoF) were under pressure to commence works on this project due to state government funding requirements. This pressure lead to the use of the Construction Management process – due to the fact that documentation could not be finalized prior to the tender process. The construction management process both required and promoted a close working relationship with all parties – including;
Once engaged, it became ACorp Constructions responsibility to provide feedback on the documentation (in relation to how best to “package the scope up” and who should tender it) as it was completed and then to tender out the various packages of work. ACorp would then present the tenders for the various packages of work to the clients superintendent with a recommendation. Once approved, ACorp would then engage the approved contractor / sub- contractor and manage their works on site. There are 2 main advantages of this process; the first is the overall speed of the process – because the builder is already engaged prior to the documentation being completed. The other main advantage is the accuracy of the pricing; because trades are pricing with the knowledge that they are pricing to a builder already engaged. The trades are not needing to build in a long lead time into their pricing and needing to try and guess what the price of their raw materials will be. The design of the building was dictated by its use. Trays of heavy core sample are stored more than 10.m in the air on special pallet racks. This meant that the ridge was over 16.m in height. The height of the ridge created some interesting challenges – including one of scheduling – due to the fact that the building is in the flight path of the City of Kalgoorlie- Boulder airport. This meant that at certain times of the day, ACorp had to ensure that booms on cranes were not extended above a certain height. The main critical element of the project was the Super-Flat Floor. This was a requirement due to the weight of the core samples and height at which they were stored at. The special lifters of these core sample trays required a super flat surface to operate on. This meant achieving between Fmin75 – Fmin100 flatness to the Core Library expansion area. Being a regional area, specialist contractors were required for this element – however, ACorp ensured an extremely high level of local content and local involvement.
