"Winning this national AIPM award jointly with our client Blue Care is testament to the closeness of our relationship and our commitment to deliver a truly great project result for the people of Queensland," said Susie Pearn, Technical Director, Environment & Advisory Services.

Throughout the project, Aurecon overcame a number of key challenges and focussed on providing great value for the not-for-profit operator. Drawing on extensive project management expertise across health and aged care, our team was able to deliver a project saving of AUD 12 million from the original budget.

"I firmly believe the completion of the project on time, and under budget, was a direct result of the project management methodology and controls implemented by Aurecon," said Michael Green, Blue Care, Manager Capital Development.

"Through Aurecon's project management expertise, we were able to deliver a range of benefits for the client and throughout the project delivery phase," says Susie.

"Apart from the original budget savings, we made a further saving of AUD 2.2 million from the revised budget through the construction phase. Ten additional independent living units were incorporated into the scope at schematic design phase with no increase to project budget. Blue Care also benefitted from early occupation of the independent living units," adds Susie.

The Aurecon team managed the project scope with multiple Blue Care internal stakeholders, along with the organisational restructuring within Blue Care to achieve a target occupancy of 15 August 2012. Since project completion, Aurecon has returned to the facility to manage defects and to undertake a post occupancy evaluation (POE). The POE involved extensive interviews and surveys of Blue Care staff and the campus residents.

The findings from the POE are now instrumental to Blue Care's corporate learning and are being used to drive improvements for Blue Care's future Azure Blue developments. Aurecon is applying this learning as part of their current engagement as project manager for Blue Care's proposed Azure Blue Kawana development.

Aurecon and Blue Care had previously won Best Construction/Engineering Project under AUD 100 million at the Australian Institute of Project Management (Queensland), Project Management Achievement Awards on Friday 6 September 2013.

About the project

The project scope included 122 independent living units across three buildings and a separate residential aged care facility with 96 high-care beds. Blue Care wanted the development to promote active lifestyles and foster a sense of community through recreation facilities including extensive sub-tropical landscaped grounds, swimming pool, salon, BBQ facilities, gymnasium, café, function room and meeting rooms.

This is the first development of its kind for Blue Care and the Azure Blue Redcliffe facility provides a new model for 'ageing in place'. The fully-integrated campus provides accommodation choices of independent living apartments, optional in-home care services and a residential aged care facility.

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