PM Network - May 2016

(UTS) in Sydney, Australia needed a major make-over, it called in a rock star. To boost stagnant enrollment and rejuvenate educational engagement, the university launched a five-year, AU$180 million project to build a new home for its business school in 2010. UTS hoped the one-of-a-kind building, designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, would cultivate a more inspired environment.

“A research report once described the campus as a ‘dingy collection of buildings from which students fled’ when their lectures were done for the day,” says Nigel Oliver, director of the project management office, UTS.

Named after a prominent Chinese business leader and philanthropist, the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building at UTS was the flagship project in a 10-year, AU$1 billion campus overhaul. Project managers had to ensure that Mr. Gehry’s avant-garde vision would mesh with the university’s ambitious requirements. The project team had to balance form and function to create cutting-edge classrooms that would conform to new teaching and learning methods aiming to facilitate collaboration among the school’s 1,600 faculty and postgraduate students.

“Too often, project managers may sit back assum-
ing that an extremely high-profile architect has all
the answers and your role is just to manage the
process,” says Brian Moore, executive project man-
ager, Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building project, UTS,
Sydney, Australia. “But as a client project manager,
you should understand your organization’s require-
ments better than anyone.”
The five-year project finished on time and on
budget. But to deliver Mr. Gehry’s imaginative
design—described by media critics as a “crumpled
brown paper bag”—project managers had to think
outside the box.

“A research
report once
described
the campus
as a ‘dingy
collection
of buildings
from which
students fled’
when their
lectures were
done for the
day.”

—Nigel Oliver, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

When the
University of
Technology
Sydney
Face to Face

As part of the “flipped classroom” learning model, rooms were designed and built to foster interaction among students. In oval-shaped classrooms, students surround the teacher and see each other’s faces. In one theater-shaped room with tiered seating, each level has two rows of desks. This allows the front row of students to turn to face students in the row behind them during discussions or group work sessions.

Mr. Moore’s project team became a go-between to ensure Mr. Gehry’s team would incorporate the desired learning model in the building’s design. Before construction, classroom designs were reviewed and revised by university user groups. The project team relied on the user groups to “turn an idea into built reality,” Mr. Moore says.