Paul Hicks and Matthew Green, and their teams, both won Professional Excellence Awards in the Commercial Construction ($5m to $25m) category at the state Australian Institute of Building Awards held earlier this month.

Mr Hicks managed construction for the Eldercare Allambi redevelopment and said it ‘meant a tremendous amount’ to him and his team to be recognised for their work on the $24.5 million redevelopment which saw the residential aged care centre almost double in size to a 225-bed facility.

“Our biggest challenge involved balancing the high level of quality required with the very tight schedule but everyone on site worked together in a spirit of cooperation to ensure the success of the overall project remained the number one priority at all times,” said Mr Hicks.

“In the end, we were able to hand over a state-of-the-art facility, constructed to the highest of standards, ahead of time and the team felt real satisfaction in being able to play such an integral part in creating a facility that is so important to our community.”

Mr Green, who supervised construction at The Lodge, said the award was ‘recognition of a job well done’ despite the many challenges that needed to be overcome to achieve the final result.

“Our team is most proud of the work we did restoring the heritage-listed White House building which is a stunning architectural feature of the facility,” said Mr Green.

“Even though the planning, engineering and care that went into the repair of the columns, arches and internal walls was highly labour-intensive, it was well worth the effort to see White House restored to its original form and character.

“It has been a great pleasure to work with Eldercare and we hope we can continue the great working relationship we have with Eldercare long into the future.”

Eldercare Chief Executive Jane Pickering congratulated Marshall and Brougham on their success at this year’s state awards and was ‘extremely proud’ of what has been achieved at The Lodge and Allambi.

“Eldercare’s investment in redeveloping our residential aged care facilities at Wayville and Glengowrie shows how committed we are to caring for older South Australians for the long term and also how dedicated we are to supporting the local economy by working with a respected, long-standing local business like Marshall and Brougham,” said Ms Pickering.

“These projects presented their own unique challenges and I’m pleased to say they were overcome because our project team partners, like Marshall and Brougham, remained just as focused as us on the need to construct the best buildings possible so we can continue to deliver peace of mind with our care to residents and their families.

“We are undertaking a significant refurbishment program at Eldercare and, based on the success of our recent projects at Wayville and Glengowrie, we are delighted to be working with Marshall and Brougham again on our $4.3 million dollar redevelopment of Eldercare Oxford at Hove which will transform the site into a sophisticated, seaside residential aged care facility.”

Mr Hicks was also awarded Building Professional of the Year for South Australia and has been named a finalist for this award at the national level.

The National Building Professional of the Year Award for Australia will be announced at a ceremony on Saturday 2 September in Brisbane.

Image: Eldercare Project Team Manager David Boughey with Marshall and Brougham Project Manager Paul Hicks.