17/08/2021
Recognising the hard work and dedication of our people, we are thrilled to share that our Western Australia Team brought home five awards at this year’s Master Builders WA Excellence in Construction Awards.
The wins were across a number of sectors including Heritage, Retail, Education and Government Building – a testament to our diverse skill range in the industry.
For our work on The Warders Hotel & Emily Taylor Restaurant project, we were delighted to recieve three awards – Best Historic Restoration or Renovation $1.5-5m, Best Retail Building $1.5-5m, and Best Construction on a Challenging Site.
Located in the heart of Fremantle, The Warders Cottages were originally constructed for prison wardens and their families shortly after the first convicts arrived in Western Australia in 1850, making it one of WA’s earliest structures built by convicts. In 2015, the Heritage Council of WA assumed possession with the intent to conserve, restore and repurpose the historic buildings.
Fast forward to 2020 – in a collaboration with Matthew Crawford Architects, we have successfully repurposed the six double-storey Warders Cottages into eleven beautiful boutique hotel rooms with a reception area and an Aperitivo Bar. The garden plots to the rear of the building were repurposed into the sophisticated Emily Taylor Restaurant which includes a liberal bar, commercial kitchen and boasts a large external courtyard.
As the cottages were constructed by unskilled labourers in 1851, straight or level surfaces were a rarity. A high degree of coordination was required between us, the design team and subcontractors to ensure the irregularities of the cottages were accounted for when completing the joinery, tiling, linings, trims, and exposed surfaces. The restoration works to the limestone walls also required a significant amount of restoration before they could be rendered and finished.
The Warders Hotel and Emily Taylor Restaurant site presented numerous physical, logistical and planning obstacles and as such, every detail within our construction methodology had to be carefully considered.
Some of the challenges encountered on the site included access constraints, deliveries, waste management, scaffolding and limited space on-site for amenities. To overcome the limited space on-site, several of the ground floor cottages were fitted out as temporary site offices and lunchrooms, which were progressively relocated and rotated as works to the cottages were undertaken.
You can read more about the project here.
Our team continues to thrive in WA’s education sector with Belridge Secondary College Performing Arts Centre winning the award for Best Education Building $1.5-5m.
The project involved alterations and an extension to the existing Performing Arts Centre building. The modifications were comprised of re-defining the existing rooms, new finishes and services throughout and some structural upgrades. Externally, the building features face brickwork, a metal roof and wall cladding and an illuminated glass lightbox.
The extension provides a new theatre featuring retractable tiered seating, sprung timber flooring and state-of-the-art theatre equipment, including lighting and sound. The new theatre also features unique timber cassette walls to enhance the acoustic and visual properties of the space. Belridge Performing Arts Centre adds to our previous success in the same award category in 2019 for Corpus Christi College’s Theatre.
You can read more about the project here.
The fifth and final award of the night went to Kensington Career Fire Station for Best Government Building $5-10m.
Having entrusted us with numerous projects in the past, the Department of Finance engaged us once more to construct the new Kensington Fire Station facility.
The new facility replaces the existing fire station on George Street built in 1973, which, remained live and operational throughout the construction of the new facility, with the existing common driveway to be shared and managed throughout the construction. The building’s functional design reflects emergency response capability changes in the local urban landscape in recent decades, particularly an increase in medium to high-rise residential and commercial buildings.
You can read more about the project here.
