The Plenary Schools consortium partnered with the Queensland Government to deliver a package of 10 schools across southeast Queensland.
The Queensland Schools public-private partnership is at the cornerstone of the Queensland Government’s Strategic Plan for education in Queensland and plays a key role in meeting the unprecedented demand for education in the State.
The project has seen new schools delivered at Pimpama, Burpengary, Pallara, Ripley Valley, Springfield West, Griffin, Bellbird Park, Caboolture and Redbank Plains over five years.
The two secondary and eight primary schools now cater for up to 10,000 students.
Plenary Schools has financed, designed, constructed, commissioned the schools over a five-year delivery period, and now provides facilities management services for the schools for a further 25 years.
Construction started in January 2014, and the fhe first package of schools opened on time at the start of the 2015 academic year.
The tenth and final school, Spring Mountain State School, was completed in December 2018 ready for the start of the 2019 school year.
Design features
Plenary Schools has delivered school environments that support quality, cost-effective and innovative education, with the flexibility to accommodate current and future curricular activities.
Fundamental to the design was the development of a ‘model school’, which provided a benchmark for each site and ensured a common design theme across all schools.
It allowed for the standardisation of some buildings, and efficiencies in construction and ongoing maintenance, but allowed each school to have its own unique identity.
Innovations
The project has delivered school environment that supports quality, cost effective and innovative educational service delivery with the flexibility to accommodate current and future curricular activities.
All ten schools include energy-efficiency measure that deliver comfortable learning and teaching environments. For example, making the best use of indoor and outdoor spaces by achieving efficiencies in natural light, shade, glare and temperature.
Also, by investing 100 per cent of the project’s equity requirement, Plenary has provided the State with a strategy to ensure certainty, flexibility and value-for-money.
Local economic impacts
Economic activity was boosted during construction, with around 1,700 local construction and supply chains jobs generated each year.
The vast majority of the trades used on site were local companies, providing a boost to southeast Queensland’s local economy.
The project is playing a key role in meeting the demand for education in the state by providing places for more than 10,000 new students and employing more than 650 staff.