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Pyramid Constructions |

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Embodiment of sustainability


Embodiment of sustainability


Pyramid Constructions (WA) has been an industry-leading force in the Western Australian building industry for more than 15 years. Backed by the larger Pyramid Group, they provide clients with the highest level of professional services for the property and construction industries. They work with integrity and reliability, and take a coopera-tive approach with clients and designers to optimise solutions whilst completing proj-ects to time and quality requirements. Since their registration in 1999, Pyramid Construction (WA) has been growing steadi-ly and organically, honing their systems and procedures to be a company of best practice. In that time, they have developed a diverse portfolio of successful projects, including ev-erything from places of worship, to schools, lecture halls, sports centres, airport stations, retirement homes, shopping centres, service centres, medical centres, offices, and apart-ments. Over the years, the company’s track re-cord and continued success has allowed them to develop projects of increasing com-plexity and quality – culminating recently in the award-winning Green Skills Building at the Central Institute of Technology (CIT).“I believe we were the right choice to build it due to our qualifications,” says David Steed,


the Project Manager for the building. “Our systems background and our financial background are solid, and we’ve shown our-selves capable of handling complex projects.” According to David, that experience and stability – when combined with Pyramid’s underlying commitment to transparency and openness – had helped the company to overcome the myriad challenges they faced over the course of the project. Ultimately, he says it helped them to deliver a highly suc-cessful outcome for all stakeholders.

The Green Skills Building is a new four-storey training centre located at CIT’s East Perth campus. The building houses the in-stitute’s qualifications and courses related to sustainability, the environment, and green skills training. It is the first 6-Star Green Star educational and training facility in Western Australia, and was designed and built to be the “embodiment of sustainable technology, practise, architecture, construction, land-scaping, and engineering.”

RALLYING TOGETHER


EXCELLENT LEADERSHIP

According to David, the key to achieving that literally exemplary result was forming a partnership relationship with the client, and communicating with them from beginning to end. “We worked very closely with the client throughout the project,” he says. “CIT has a project manager of capital works, and she was involved from the design stage and through-out construction as the client representative. She kept us informed of the client’s require-ments, such as the 6-Star Green Star rating, so we could deliver the project exceeding all

expectations.” As a place for students to learn about building, trade, and computer design, the client requested that the building itself be a teaching tool through example. Pyramid complied by utilising “peel-back design,” leaving many of the common areas without ceilings so that the structural elements and services running through the building could be observed. As a result, faculty could show students around the building and point out particular green features in action, both as examples and for theoretical studies.

RALLYING TOGETHER


“That was just one of the features the client requested, and we delivered quite a few,” Da-vid continues. “All our client-side meetings were attended by CIT’s manager of capital works and our consultants, and they were al-ways providing input on the client’s behalf or the end-user’s behalf wherever it was needed. Together, we value-managed the project to reduce the costs while still achieving a result that everyone was more than satisfied with.”Pyramid also worked hand-in-hand with the campus site services officer, who oversaw the company’s work fulltime and provided in-valuable feedback and advice throughout.

“We dealt with him quite a bit,” David says. “He was involved in the day-to-day practicalities, figuring out where to tie back into existing buildings while keeping con-struction fenced off, where to tie in electrical and power services, handling the chilled wa-ter feed from the campus mains, scheduling shutdowns and working around class times – all sorts of situations where our work ex-tended into the rest of the campus. At the end of the project, he was also involved with services handover and training new staff.” “We still keep in touch with him as things come up,” David adds. “But it was and still is

DEVOTED TO DETAILS


a very good working relationship.” On all their projects, Pyramid strives to maintain strong relationships with their subcontractors as well, and the Green Skills Building was no exception. According to David, the hard work and dedication of the tradespeople on the project was pivotal to achieving the amazing outcome. “We had a really good team of subcon-tractors on this job,” he says. “There were a lot of challenges for them, but they all rallied together and put in their best effort. It was very pleasing to see some trades that we’ve worked with before and some new ones as well that were able to all come together and achieve the end result.”

Pyramid Constructions (WA) was award-ed the contract for the Green Skills Building back in 2012, and they started construction later that year. According to David, the proj-ect’s unique nature meant it was full of chal-lenges from the very beginning. He says Pyr-amid met and overcame each one, creating a green building unlike anything seen before. “Maintaining the workflow and sequenc-ing was a bit different than conventional builds in this project,” he explains. “There was some lag and design issues in

implementation, and those delays in turn af-fected our offsite work on steel and concrete materials. The exposed surfaces and types of ceiling stages were very difficult to finish.” As an example, David cites how the se-quencing on the building floor required pre-cast floor slabs, followed by a constructive topping, insulation, and a final topping af-ter that. Similar multilayered processes were required for other surfaces in the walls and ceiling. This meant extra caution was needed for pouring concrete in rooms that already had finished wall shadings and were closed up, when in more typical projects the

DEVOTED TO DETAILS


concrete would already have been set long beforehand. “There were external challenges as well,” David says. “The way the façades of the building were, a lot of the steel structure was intentionally left visible, with all the wall cladding left on one alignment. It meant do-ing the sun-screening and finishes in the wall line first, then moving the scaffold out to work on the outside line. It was slow going and took quite a while to get all the details done right.” But Pyramid did get them right, and man-aged to also obtain a 6-Star rating from the green building council for their work in sus-tainability features, which was a major goal of the project. One of the many features that helped them achieve that rating were the PV solar arrays mounted to the roof – as well as

the northern face of the building – which connect back to the main power facility on the CIT campus. Other environmentally sustainable fea-tures on the project include a blackwater treatment plant, ensuring 100 per cent of the sewage coming from the building was treated onsite and made reusable. Rainwater collec-tion tanks were also placed atop the building for further water recycling. The third floor, meanwhile, features a “green roof ” area with landscaped gardens, trees, and shade struc-tures for students to utilise. The list of green features goes on, David says, and includes low-energy LED lighting, natural ventilation, and efficiency-minded building automation systems – to name just a few.



Pryamid Construction (WA)’s exemplary work on the Green Skills Building did not go unnoticed or unrewarded. At the 2015 AIB Professional Excellence in Building Awards for Western Australia, the company – and David personally – won the category for Commercial Construction $10 million to $50 million. “It’s always nice to be recognised for what you’re doing,” says David. “On the other hand, we were just doing the job that we were employed to do. My role is to manage jobs, to get them from start to finish. The award just reinforces that I did my job correctly and to the best of my ability.” “Still, it’s very satisfying to earn recogni-

tion on a job with this level of complexity,” he adds. “I think right from the start, the client was very ambitious about what they wanted in the building. We spent a lot of time trying to design it right.” “The project included a lot of technologies and special features, especially for a building this size,” he says. “It took a lot of coordina-tion, and a lot of hard work. I’m proud that, as the head contractor, we were able to drive progress throughout the construction phase with excellent leadership. The end result was a good quality building that the client was after, and one we were satisfied to deliver.”


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