Among the disorder of the federal government's schools stimulus program one state has used a series of pre-designed templates to streamline and speed-up construction.
Architecture firms Hayball and Gray Puksand worked collaboratively on the 21 templates used as a guide for schools and implementation teams in Victoria.
"The templates offered a great benefit," explains director at Hayball, Richard Leonard. "They have accelerated the process, not only putting down as quickly as possible designs that cover as many contingencies as possible for as many schools, but also offering a range of different funding levels."
The templates have been developed in sets that can be readily taken up by implementation teams, and accompanying documentation including the plans, specifications, cost estimates, shop drawings, bill of quantities were used as tender documentation.
Hayball and Gray Puksand were approached by the Victorian Department of Education to construct the templates shortly after the federal government announced the Building the Education Revolution (BER) stimulus program in February this year.
The firms had worked recently with the department on the development of 11 new schools and said the templates were a continuation of work they had done, using the intelligence they had gathered for that project for designing the templates.
"The templates have been designed as an entire suit of templates with a consistent philosophy," said Leonard. "They provide a student-centred learning environment, to meet the 21st Century education demands of the federal government stimulus package. It is very much turning the tables on education delivery-changing it form teacher-centred into a more student-centred environment."
The schools stimulus program has come under pressure from numerous groups for its time constraints and implementation, with many claiming it forced projects to begin without adequate planning.
Leonard said all parties involved have faced the same challenges, but the templates, along with the associated materials provided a "pretty powerful" set of documents and in this turbo charged environment this accelerated the process.
"I think that one issue to highlight about the Victorian response to stimulus program through the templates is the comprehensive nature of the information provided for the industry. It was not simply providing designs, but supporting those designs with a whole lot of information that made it easier to digest, tender and implement. I think that has been a terrific thing that the Victorian government has done to accelerate the process."
