St Josephs School Payneham

Six new classrooms and an amenities block for 174 students delivered over the school holidays.

With only a three month on-site construction window, St Joseph’s School Payneham needed to decommission four old buildings and increase the classroom space on a restricted site to allow for the schools growing enrolments.

Ausco Modular provided an innovative solution with a two storey classroom complex. While maintaining the same building footprint, Ausco Modular was able to increase the current facilities to six classrooms and provide a new amenities block. A link from the second storey to the adjacent building was incorporated to allow safe and easy access for students.

To minimise school disruptions, the onsite construction was scheduled around the school holidays. Careful planning and adherence to a strict project programme allowed the successful removal of existing transportable classrooms and installation of the new classrooms before the school reopened for term 1, 2010.

The building site posed an interesting challenge with restricted space and limited access to remove the old buildings and install the new ones. To ensure site access flowed smoothly, the project team quickly identified that the amenities block needed to be installed first to allow access and site works for the classroom buildings.

To ensure that the School’s objectives were met, Ausco Modular worked together with the Catholic Education Office and Tony Lippis from Architects Ink as well as Paul Campbell Architects.

St. Joseph’s School is delighted with the finished project, highlighting the buildings ability to blend in with the existing infrastructure as a key feature. The quality of the internal finishes makes it difficult to believe the buildings are factory built.

The alternative solution of traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ construction would have demanded a longer schedule and caused greater disruption to the school’s operations.

Ausco Modular’s design team strived to create an exciting space that would support St. Joseph’s nurturing and caring learning philosophy.