Big challenge as Women’s and Children’s emerges from park lands
One of the state’s top project directors tells InDaily about the biggest challenge facing Adelaide’s new $3.2 billion hospital build.
At 36, Corey McDonald is at the helm of megaprojects transforming Adelaide, including the new Women’s & Children’s Hospital on North Terrace.
With a price tag of $3.2 billion, the building is now rising on a plot of Adelaide park lands adjacent to the new Royal Adelaide Hospital that was once home to the heritage-listed Thebarton Police Barracks.
The hospital was a “complex build”, according to McDonald, who said, “we manage those complexities around early engagement”.
But supply chain problems were a “big” challenge. While he said he could not comment on whether the project would come in under the budgeted $3.2 billion – as Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis insisted it would when handing down his latest state budget – he acknowledged generally there was volatility.
“There’s volatility in markets and for me, it’s about how we respond to it,” he said.
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Once constructed, the project that previously triggered controversy and special state government legislation over the police barracks being demolished so the medical facility could be constructed in the northwestern park lands, would include 414 overnight beds.
McDonald is Adelaide Buildings Leader at Aurecon, an engineering and design firm currently contracted to work on the new hospital that is continuing to advance after new images were released in January as the medical centre’s eight-storey carpark neared completion.
In this role, he is the project director on the hospital, bringing with him experience from two other major South Australian engineering projects: the Mount Gambier Technical College and the Adelaide Aquatic Centre redevelopment.
But it was an unlikely career trajectory for McDonald, whose career started as a plumbing apprentice.
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He eventually got a job in mining, working as a hydraulic services engineer for BESTEC, before joining Aurecon in 2018. He’s now worked there for more than eight years, working his way to the role of Adelaide Buildings Leader.
“I’ve had an interesting pathway into the world of engineering,” McDonald said.
He now leads a team of 80 that recently won the Property Council of Australia’s South Australian Team of the Year Award.
That team recently delivered an award-winning major project: the $135 million redevelopment of the Adelaide Aquatic Centre.
It was a complicated project, McDonald said, especially as it was “highly political” due to it being built on park lands and required the removal of trees.
“The Adelaide Aquatic Centre was a wonderful project because it had really complex engineering – delivering a number of pools,” he said.
The installation of massive timber beams was central to the project. The beams – Australia’s largest by weight and volume – were installed to hold the building together.
McDonald said the project was “one of the strongest building information management environments I think the state has ever seen”.
Now, he is at the coalface of “one of the most significant health infrastructure projects in Australia”.
“I don’t think one day is the same,” he said.
“It’s a massive team effort – hundreds of people working on this project – but it’s really rewarding.”
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