City: Sydney

With a background as Australia’s multicultural broadcaster, the principal function of the Special Broadcasting Service Corporation (SBS) is to provide multilingual, multicultural and Indigenous radio, television and digital media services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians. Informed by its special Charter, SBS’s purpose is to inspire all Australians to celebrate diversity and in doing so, contribute to social cohesion.

Across five television channels, SBS delivers a unique mix of Australian produced and international programs in more than 65 languages; bold, provocative programing for a younger demographic; a national free-to-air Indigenous channel, and on the subscription platform, the best of international movies and local, grass-roots arts and entertainment.

In 2011, SBS engaged Strategy to help develop a vision for its Sydney headquarters, to equip the organisation to address the challenges of media convergence and to leverage opportunities from the cross-platform offering of its flagship programs and services. The physical working environment needed to support SBS’s objectives of a collaborative and high-performance delivery focus.

Employees from the commercial divisions of SBS Media, Distribution and Subscription Television were successfully relocated in the Agile Work Place Pilot space in October 2013. SBS has since observed a measurable lift in the successful cross-divisional collaboration of teams around its strategic objectives and a marked improvement in the efficient sharing of skills and resources; all critical to its plan of continuously maximising the public value of investment in SBS.

All SBS employees have benefited from the creation of a new Content Hub and additional collaboration spaces in its atrium, transforming a tired, underutilised area into a state-of-the-art presentation space for a wide range of SBS internal and external events. The spaces have also been used as a backdrop for a number of SBS internal television productions.

“Building a physical work environment to support the agile and cross-platform way in which SBS delivers its programs and services was central to our broader plan to equip the organisation to continue effectively delivering on its Charter, and to implement new and innovative initiatives to secure our success in a competitive media landscape.”
Martin Wright, Manager Corporate Services & Facilities, SBS Corporation.

Faced with increasing pressure from competition and urban growth, the Sydney Ports Corporation was looking for someone to help them plan for the future. They turned to AECOM to prepare a Port Master Plan that would provide the basis for making important decisions regarding port development to the year 2020 and beyond.

The initial focus began with the growing need for improved productivity at the ports, environmental and social issues, and the limitations on land and water availability. Also, the need for land transport connections and how to integrate these into an integrated plan that would serve future investors, government planners, and regulatory agencies, all led to a study that included emphasis on the following areas:

• Analyzing cargo and shipping trends;
• Assessing site conditions;
• Preparing port layout options;
• Analyzing capacity;
• Identifying environmental issues; and
• Identifying intermodal issues.

After close collaboration with the client and assessing various options, both a master plan and a staged development program were created that would serve as a roadmap to move forward with key features that included:

• Providing for container traffic growth at Botany;
• Preserving Sydney Harbor port operations in the medium term;
• Meeting demand for multi-purpose dry and liquid bulk terminals;
• Improving rail and road access;
• Reserving strategic land for port-related industry; and
• Ensuring compatibility with Sydney Airport operations.

A key theme of the master plan was supporting the Corporation’s commitment to sustainable development and minimizing impacts to the environment and local communities.

Bricklayers have called their involvement in its construction a “career highlight”, and soon it will be where the next generation of business careers are nurtured.

Designed by internationally-renowned architect Frank Gehry, the University of Technology, Sydney’s (UTS) new Business School, with its rippling façade and angled columns, is one of the most iconic buildings currently under construction in Australia, setting a precedent for future architectural design.

Having been referred to as a “cluster of tree houses”, a “crumpled paper bag” and an “urban sandcastle”, the Dr Chau Chak Wing building’s unique masonry façade—contorting and twisting in a three-dimensional plane for the full height of the 14-storey structure—created structural engineering challenges requiring innovative solutions.

In collaboration with UTS and the brick supplier, AECOM developed a unique brick, tie, mortar and backing system that solved the load, constructability and complex geometrical issues, allowing a near impossible feat of engineering to be realised.

“There is no building in the world that has bricks like this”, Stephen Giblett, AECOM’s Building Structures Lead, told ABC Radio’s “By Design” program.

“The bricklayers on this project are very proud of what they’ve done, because they’ve taken standard bricklaying and they’ve gone back to being the grand masons of centuries past to create something beautiful.”

“One of the bricklayers even has a tattoo on his arm of the bricks which shows the pride they have in what they’ve achieved, and which results in the building’s defining characteristic.”

It’s not just the outside of the Dr Chau Chak Wing building where boundaries are being pushed.

AECOM worked with UTS to embed several sustainability features within the building that again set it apart as a 21st century learning space.

One of the challenges AECOM faced in partnership with UTS was how to heat and cool the building sustainably. The interior consists of various different zones – lecture theatres, offices and meeting rooms – all requiring different methods of temperature control.

The solution? Provide dedicated air conditioning units for each zone, and sensor technology to minimise wastage when a zone is unoccupied. The building also uses a higher than normal volumes of outdoor air to cool fan coil units.

This fresh-air feature, combined with shorter air conditioning ducts means fans don’t need to work as hard, and air-cooled chillers mean the building does not consume much water in the process. In fact, water usage is kept to a minimum across the building, with a fire water reclamation system and water-efficient appliances fitted throughout.