An aged care development is a building project wrapped around an operating business, a funding model and a regulator. The building is the easy part. What decides whether a facility opens on the planned date with the planned budget is the sequence of decisions in the two years before a builder arrives on site. These are the lessons from delivering a 90 bed facility at Euroa, a 120 bed facility at Nunawading and independent living units for the same provider.
Start with the masterplan, not the building
Most aged care sites are campuses: an existing facility, a future stage, independent living, staff parking, a chapel, a service yard. A masterplan that fixes access, services corridors, staging and the sequence of demolition and construction is what lets a provider build stage one without boxing in stage three. It is also the document that funders and the regulator read first. Do it before the architect starts on the building.
The approvals that take longest
- Town planning. In most Victorian municipalities a residential aged care facility is a permit-required use, with car parking, traffic and neighbour amenity the usual sticking points. Allow six to twelve months from lodgement, longer if the site is in a heritage or bushfire overlay.
- Subdivision and titles. Independent living units sold under a retirement village or strata model need the subdivision sequenced with construction so titles issue when residents settle. Sort the subdivision pathway during planning, not after.
- Power authority infrastructure. A 100 plus bed facility often needs a new substation or a supply upgrade, and the distributor's design and construction lead time can run past a year. At Nunawading the power authority upgrade was on the critical path from the start; it was managed as its own sub-project so it did not become the building's problem.
- The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and the funding approvals. Bed licences, accreditation of the new service and the capital funding are outside the building programme but set the opening date. The provider's team runs these; the project manager's job is to align the construction milestones with them.
The costs owners forget
- Authority infrastructure contributions and headworks for water, sewer and power.
- Sub-division works: roads, drainage and services to lots that are not the building.
- Temporary works to keep an existing facility operating during construction: hoardings, fire separation, relocated services, staff and resident access.
- FF&E and loose furniture, which is a separate budget of real size on a 100 bed facility and is often not in the building contract.
- Commissioning: nurse call, fire, security, BMS, kitchen and laundry equipment all need commissioning and staff training before the first resident moves in.
Building inside a live facility
Where the new works sit beside an operating home, the construction methodology has to answer resident safety first: infection control between the site and the home, fire separation maintained at every stage, noise and vibration windows, and a single point of contact between the site manager and the director of nursing. A builder who has not done this before will underprice it.
FF&E decides the opening date
On a new facility the building can be complete and the doors still shut because the beds, the loose furniture or the kitchen equipment are late. FF&E procurement runs as its own programme with long-lead items ordered against the construction programme, deliveries sequenced to the room handover schedule, and installation before commissioning, not after. Interior design and FF&E procurement in the one team, as Silverfox runs it, is how the finishes selections and the delivery logistics stay attached to each other.
The roles, and who should hold them
An aged care development usually has a client-side project manager, an architect, a superintendent and a builder. The provider needs at least one of those to be independent of the builder and answerable only to the provider. Silverfox has held the client-side project management and superintendent roles for providers in Melbourne and regional Victoria, and delivers independent living units and refurbishments as builder. Whichever roles you fill, fill the client-side one first: it is the seat that owns the sequence above.