Rendine digs in to deliver a top result for Wyndham Christian College

 

With a growing reputation as one of Victoria's foremost school specialists, Rendine Constructions proved the smart choice for

Wyndham Christian College to add a sparkling new multipurpose classroom building and surrounding sports facilities to its rapidly

expanding campus in Wyndham Vale.

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The distinctive 850 sq m building is sited on a vacant plot adjacent to the school's pre-existing infrastructure. It includes four general purpose classrooms plus arts, music, science and food tech rooms, as well as a toilet block and staffroom.

The classrooms straddle a central hallway featuring a dramatic 7-metre-high ceiling.

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The project for the school's owner, Christian Resource Ministries, included an adjoining 1700 sq m outdoor double sports court,

overlaid by a 10-metre-tall tensile steel structure supporting a durable fabric covering designed to provide shade for users in

summer and year-round protection from rain. Installation of high-mount floodlights, plus goal fixtures for basketball and netball,

completed an all-weather facility suited to daytime or evening use.

 

Rendine Constructions Project Manager Ben Vawdrey says the multi-faceted project, whilst relatively straightforward on paper,

unearthed a few challenges - quite literally.

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Before site excavations to place footings could begin, underground power and fibre cables serving an adjacent telecommunications tower needed to be carefully moved. “We were required to use a method known as Non-Destructive Digging,” Ben says.

“It's painstaking work because at every stage of the relocation we need to be able to see the cables and prove we know exactly where they are.” That was just the start of a protracted process to prepare the site, as excavations continually uncovered large rocks strewn beneath the surface. “Every time we broke ground, there was another big rock to remove. Even before we'd begun laying the building foundations, we were behind schedule,” Ben says.

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The result, inarguably, was worth the extra effort. Eye-catching tall roof pitches and high-level windows designed by DKO Architecture lend the classroom building a highly sophisticated finish.  

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Tapping into Rendine Constructions' decades of experience in supplying both conventional and modular building solutions for schools all over Victoria, Ben says it proved “pretty straightforward” for our extensively experienced team to convert the distinctive design to reality.

 

The final phase was the installation of the adjoining sports court. An enormous made-to-order fabric canopy was positioned using boom lifts and in a week-long process, was carefully tensioned across the framework by tightening bolts, to complete a project that drew on many and varied aspects of Rendine Constructions' renowned ingenuity.

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Graeme Huf, the project manager for Christian Resource Ministries, says Rendine Constructions delivered “a quality project” in spite of challenges that included time-consuming and costly excavation of rock from the site.

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“With all the rock that was unearthed, and the impact of COVID lockdowns on the project, it became a different project. We really had to work together to achieve an outstanding outcome for Wyndham Christian College.”