A Herd of Elephants

By Alex May

A construction company wins an environmental award for its zoo efforts.

It looks like a rainforest, can hold a herd of elephants and has a river and waterfalls running through it. When John Holland won the tender to build Taronga Zoo’s two hectare Wild Asia mega-exhibit, the company knew it was a unique job.

“We normally build large jobs but this time we finished up with something that looks like a themed display from Disneyworld,” says NSW & ACT General Manager Dennis Brewer.

“We relied on excavators and form workers and concreters - the same sort of people that you would use to build a bridge, but then we had to find other experts to create the artisan finish.”

The company sourced artists to create wooden totem poles that play recorded sounds of the rain forest, thatched huts that look like they are from Bali and wooden sculptures to dot the grounds of the two hectare site.

Taronga Zoo media relations manager Mark Williams says the harbourside exhibit is essentially a rainforest, with 24,000 plants and displays of animals like silvery gibbons, Malayan tapirs, otters. It also has two soaring bird aviaries with golden pheasants, spoonbills and Javan sparrows.

“Being on the harbour, we had to make sure that construction was sensitive to the environment,” he says.

John Holland has won an environmental management award of excellence for the construction of the exhibit, which has its own water recycling and filtration system to create the river and waterfalls.

Awards judge Max Mosher says the environmental controls on such a unique construction job are as interesting and quirky as the inhabitants in the exhibit.

“Apparently the gorillas nearby got very upset when they saw bright colours, so the builders had to take off their safety vests and jackets and all the trucks that drove past had to be specially coloured,” he says.

“The builders also had to stop work for a few weeks while some of the surrounding inhabitants gave birth.”

Brewer says the exhibit was constructed on a steep waterfront site and required careful management of excavation to avoid run-off falling into the harbour.

It also used second-hand materials like car tyres and recycled concrete to form the site

“We used a lot of environmental protection procedures like silt fencing and were careful not to open up too much of the site at any one time,” Brewer says.

Existing buildings on the site also had to be carefully demolished, as existing large trees had to be preserved.

SCHOOL AWARD

Constructing buildings for schools is an education in itself, according to Derek Sidey.

The managing director of Gledhill Constructions, who has built facilities for Santa Sabina College, Loreto School Normanhurst and Pymble Ladies College, says school construction is quite unlike building on a greenfields site.

“Usually you are trying to work around staff and students in a functioning school. It’s very hard to build without making noise, you know” he says.

“The school holidays become the only time you can do loud and dusty work. There are occupational health and safety plans to make sure no-one can be hurt and then you have access problems for trucks and concrete pumps.”

Sidey’s company has won an MBA construction award for best use of bricks in an educational building for work on a new library and staff facilities at Santa Sabina College in Strathfield.

The three-storey building is a blend of modern glass and steel frames with precise brickwork and charming archways that pay homage to the surrounding heritage convent buildings.

And it’s the brickwork that makes this building. The precisely laid bricks and arch features feel modern yet well-worn and inviting.

Designed by Tanner and Associates, the design specified extensive use of face brick internal walls rather than relying on gyprocking or expensive plastering.

“All school buildings work to a tight budget and the exposed brick walls were a good way to mix function – they withstand very harsh use – as well as making the rooms pleasant places to be,” he says.

The building – which took 13 months to complete – used Austral Bowral dry-pressed bricks in a colour matched to surrounding buildings which date back to the 1900s.

It also demanded a high standard of workmanship, which Sidey says can be difficult to source.

“We have a partnership with master bricklayers who are just very very good at getting things right,” he says.

B & K Bricklaying, owned by Kevin Kilbride and Neil Bishop, have worked on all the school buildings constructed by Gledhill Constructions.

“My partner and I were trained in Britain so we see our job as a trade, and take pride in it,” says Kevin Kilbride, who has been a bricklayer for 35 years.

Kilbride says the difficulties of creating beautifully laid walls with exposed brick on each side are immense.

“You can’t hide anything dodgy because the whole wall is in view and mistakes are obvious,” he says.

“You need to mix consistent ratios of sand and cement for the mortar, otherwise the uneven colour shows.”

Bishop and Kilbride say the key to a quality job is working with companies that allow bricklayers the time to get it right.

“So many companies nowadays don’t pay enough to allow the job to be done well. They just want to rush you and then the finish isn’t as good,” Kilbride says.

He also insists on using dry-pressed bricks rather than extruded bricks (which have holes in them) because of their superior quality.

“You can’t make a good job out of bad materials,” he says.