As part of their role in the New Zealand Schools Public-Private Partnership, Programmed Facility Management has commenced its management in Design Consultancy works. These works are related to; modifying existing educational spaces, adding new buildings to the site, and extending the existing building to allow for rapid growth in student
enrolments for Queenstown, Rolleston and Hobsonville Point.
Wakatipu High School is one such school, adding additional footprint space to accommodate their final role of 1,800 students.
The Extension
The existing school space requires modification, with extension build works to be located at the front and rear of the existing building. Our on-site team’s challenge is to provide for the operational services that allow for teaching and learning, whilst ensuring that construction works that would significantly impact this are minimal.
To meet the need for additional space whilst the current building is being modified, the Ministry has brought in modular classrooms, which have been installed on-site.
Our FM team has been working closely with the construction partners to coordinate between the Ministry’s brief, schools’ functional requirements, and the safe work environment, while the school is still operating.
To help manage this, an on-site Design and Construction coordinator was appointed to act as a point of contact between all involved parties, providing solutions to the challenges that enable the construction team to keep progressing and the school to stay close to normal operating conditions. Whilst our on-site Programmed Operations Team concentrates on providing our day-to-day service operations.
The Modular Village Construction
With parts of the main building closing to allow for the extension, the Ministry engaged Southbase to design and build a modular village located a short distance from the school. The modular village accommodates 16 classes, servicing up to 460 students.
Our FM team’s involvement in the modular classrooms has been service-focused, including moving the furniture, fixtures and equipment from the school into the new classrooms. This included teacher resource areas, working with our subcontractors on the maintenance requirements for the area and completing testing of the modulars alongside Southbase to ensure the school’s needs (PA, Fire Alarms, etc.) were replicated in the modular village.
The Outcome
Our role has been to provide the design and construction team with quality advice on the best usage for current and future school operations.
Providing a Facility Management Design Brief, which supplements the Ministry’s technical brief, has reduced capital replacements costs and ensured that operational costs reflect the work required with smart design. The collective knowledge from the management of similar sites meant the wealth of information from estimation to asset Management and life-cycle management, has been shared to make Wakatipu a school fit to deliver learning excellence.
Programmed Facility Management has fully integrated themselves into our Design & Build Teams, providing valuable advice on how to minimise maintenance costs through changes to the building design. Their understanding of user experience also provided valuable insight into what areas required additional focus in design. We look forward to seeing our positive relationship continue into the operations and maintenance period.
Cark Kirk-Burnnand, Project Manager – HRL Morrison & Co.
