Kelvin Grove Urban Village - QLD, Australia

Brisbane’s Aurecon Group has been an integral part of the development of a new integrated community – Brisbane’s Kelvin Grove Urban Village – ‘a vision for the future’ (Queensland Premier Peter Beattie).

Much of the Village is situated on the former Gona Barracks site, which was originally owned by the Department of Defence (DoD), whilst the balance area is jointly owned by both Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Queensland Government, Department of Housing (DoH). The DoH and QUT are redeveloping the total site, as a mixed use/residential precinct for retail, commercial, and university functions and accommodation with projects like QUT’s Creative Industry.

The construction of the Village has been designed to have the smallest environmental impact possible and to preserve important cultural aspects of the site. Design challenges the site posed for Aurecon Group (as Principal Consultant for the infrastructure delivery), included certain heritage areas, such as trees, buildings and open spaces on the upper parade ground area, which had to be preserved. In the early planning phase, the project team consulted with both the Turrbal Association and the Heritage Council, the outcome being a Cultural Heritage Management Plan.

The project entailed major rework and many options. According to Designer John Martin, being “able to turn around the options extremely quickly with 12d Model, often ‘on the fly’, was great. I’d sit at the computer with the landscape architect, the engineer on the job, the council planning officers, and the client, and shift things around on the screen so they’d be able to immediately see what was going on. It was simple!”

“The fact that we were able to produce a quick perspective of what the finished site was actually going to look like was extremely beneficial. Without 12d Model, we would have had a lot of trouble putting together something to show the layperson how the finished product would look at completion.”

According to Principal project engineer, Mark Reardon, “One issue (of many) that the project had to resolve was the integration of the new storm water system into the existing storm water network. Because of the staging of the project, we had to plan progressive links between the new and the old systems. Being able to hold all that information in the model was a great advantage. We serviced all the other design teams that were on the job with long-sections, cross-sections and contours and were able to do this very quickly.”

“Another issue was remediation. The identified contaminated areas were logged and we then created a number of different layers to show where the contaminated areas were in both plan and sectional view. We used these sectional views to display what was going to happen in the future and how deep under the finished surface the contaminated material would be. We had to prove this to the Department of Defence as part of a sales agreement. Additionally we had to show where residential areas, in particular the building footprints, would be in relation to remediated areas to settle an argument they had in terms of getting the site removed from the Environment Protection Agency’s EMR (Environmental Management Register). 12d Model was invaluable for this.”

“Brisbane City Council was also very happy with our procedure of using 12d Model to demonstrate the finished surface. In fact, that was one of the reasons we got the approval. Their two major concerns were predicting the appearance of the finished product and ensuring public safety in the future. Because we could get down on a visual plane and give relative heights, we could illustrate these aspects with confidence and alleviate concerns.”

“Overall, everyone was pleased with the project outcome. It’s currently being constructed and we’re almost out of the ground now.” The project is scheduled for completion in August 2003, with the QUT’s Creative Industries Project due to open its doors for students at the start of the 2004 academic year.