Yalata is an Aboriginal community located 200km West of Ceduna (Ceduna is an 8-hour drive from Adelaide). This small community had a health centre that required extension and refurbishment to provide appropriate health services for the region and its people.
The 200m² extension to the existing premises includes new offices, a training area, staff and meeting rooms and an outdoor deck area. The refurbishment component of the project included the expansion of existing treatment facilities, updating current offices and creating an Allied Health treatment room for specialist health services such as podiatry and physiotherapy.
Projects in remote communities have their own unique set of challenges, the most obvious being logistics where additional cost comes for transport and scopes of work need to be clearly understood to ensure there are no delays or missing building elements – there is no local hardware store! In many of our works packages we separated out the supply from the installation of materials in order to closely manage the transportation of items from Adelaide to the site so we could maintain the programme.
An example of the challenges on a remote site was when there was a system failure with the hydraulic crane on site. The team had to instantly find a different way of assembling and installing the roof structure without using the hydraulics – pre-assembling the roof elements and installing them in two pieces using a 100 tonne crane with spreader was determined as the best solution.
The project was initially to be constructed in two stages, the extension and the refurbishment. After a significant delay in supply of steel, in order to remain on programme and budget, our solution was to run both phases on site concurrently. This not only brought us back on track, it also allowed our subcontractors to complete both parts of their works packages without the need to travel to the remote location multiple times, further reducing costs.
Our team were pleased to engage a local Aboriginal labourer for the term of the project who was a great help in connecting us with his community while he learnt about the commercial construction industry.
At the end of the project, the team donated excess building materials to the local community for their use.
