The University of Newcastle (UoN) undertook a complete upgrade of the Health Sciences Faculty in 2021-22 by relocating to a new building on their Callaghan campus. It was an exciting and technical project for the konnectus team to be involved in and included many different types of spaces that are used for the teaching of different heath science and medical subjects at the university. There were a few normal meeting and teaching spaces, but other unique spaces included Physio Labs, Sim Wards, ADL Labs, Radiation Therapy Sim Labs, and a CT Scanner teaching space.

Konnectus worked on this project in three distinct phases: Briefing and Discovery, Detailed Design, Installation. Briefing and Discovery was particularly important to get right because there were so many different types of teaching spaces and multiple different stakeholders for each one. Following a proven process the team was able to define the right requirements for each space and user group, which then set us up well for the detailed design phase. Design was a collaborative effort between the konnectus team and the University’s AV and ICT specialists. The University has developed design standards that needed be adhered to. In addition, though we needed to utilise the full team’s combined experience to develop smart and technical designs that optimise end user experience and meet all the stakeholders’ requirements. Definitely an enjoyable challenge for our engineers.

The last phase of the project was installation, which also had its challenges due to AV and ICT equipment lead times blowing out during the middle of the pandemic. We managed to work with suppliers and make design adjustments to keep the project timeline from blowing out too much. In the end this is a project we are very proud of and trust the medical professionals of the future enjoy first class tuition in these wonderful new facilities at UoN.