South Australian Police and Courts South Australia, Australia

This project was the first public private partnership in South Australia. It required Plenary to design, build, finance and maintain nine new police and courts facilities across six regional South Australian locations.

The Plenary consortium overcame the significant challenge of geographically dispersed sites spread across the State to deliver all nine facilities on budget and ahead of time.

The Project was driven by a need to provide modern civic infrastructure as many of the existing facilities had been built in the 1950s.

This was a small project by PPP infrastructure standards but because this was South Australia's first PPP the project was the South Australian Government's PPP "toe in the water". As such, the project - and the policy framework on which it is based - attracted an inordinate level of attention and scrutiny beyond what would be typical for a project of this scale.

In correspondence to Plenary Group, the South Australian Government's Director of Projects and Government Enterprises, Department of Treasury and Finance, Julian Robertson, noted, "The overall result for the South Australian Government has been the delivery of an important project of State significance at demonstrable value, in partnership with the Plenary Group consortium."

Project Facts

Plenary Group is the project sponsor, equity investor and financial arranger for the project.

Location: Regional South Australia, Australia
Client: South Australian Government
Value (NPV): A$40 million
Builder: Hansen Yuncken
Architect: Walter Brooke & Associates
Services: Plenary Justice
Financial Close: June 2005
Completion Date: November 2006
Contract Terms: 25 year concession

Design Features

Construction was required at six separate locations throughout South Australia, including a number of remote regional locations. Local planning requirements needed to be satisfied with six local councils. Each location had its own unique planning and heritage issues.

Local planning, including heritage matters were a priority at all sites, with one exception, and Plenary Group engaged a local historian to develop a restoration plan for significant buildings on existing sites.

With one exception, all sites were brownfield redevelopments, and involved a demanding decanting requirement and continuation of sensitive police and court operations on site.

Fast tracking of construction was achieved through the selection of simple and efficient building elements such as pre-cast cells, light weight steel framing and creating an appropriate civic design.

Innovations

The SAPOL project comprised nine police and court facilities across six separate sites in regional South Australia. This complexity, combined with the brownfields nature of many of the facilities, required a particularly innovative response to the staging of construction, and careful attention to the decanting and recanting demands of the approach.

Notwithstanding, the relatively modest scale of the project and its financing, a long-term bond was developed that dealt with these construction challenges in a way that still gave rise to a strong investment grade rating of the senior debt.

Local Economic Impacts

The South Australian Police and Courts Project fulfills the State Government's requirements for new functional, energy efficient facilities that enhance police and court operations throughout regional South Australia. The new facilities replaced those built in the 1950s and which have exceeded their useful economic lives for efficient and effective law enforcement.

Related Projects

Thunder Bay Courthouse
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

Download Project Factsheet

Loading images…

South Australian Police and Courts South Australia, Australia