The End Of Silos: Coordination Is The Key

Written by development & environment consultancy, Beveridge Williams.

The Melbourne greenfield land development market is recognised as one of the most efficient sectors in Australian urban development.

What is it that makes it so effective? Coordination is the key….

With the adoption of the Precinct Structure Planning (PSP) approach to greenfield land development, Victoria did away with the old ‘first in, best served’ approach that too often saw developments proceed in ‘silos’. The initialising developer was lumped with significant costs to deliver trunk services to a new growth area with no guarantee of contributions from surrounding land owners. Further, we saw no planning for required community facilities or urban design coordination between adjoining estates.

The result? The inevitable outcome of poorly serviced communities. It was inefficient, expensive, a waste of resources and most importantly, it created a terrible experience for the new residents stuck on the fringes of Melbourne.

The PSP process has since been created to address this issue and to guide the development of Melbourne’s growth corridors. While an overtly structured approach this coordinated method, led by the then Growth Areas Authority, ensured that no new greenfield areas would be created without access to roads and infrastructure services. It directed where the future community facilities are planned and paid for and delivered in a coordinated manner to make the process as efficient as possible.

In hindsight, it all seems so logical and hard to believe it always didn’t happen that way.

The expansion of Melbourne’s growth areas is seen as a market leader today, enabling growth at unprecedented rates as estates establish to meet continued strong demand for new estate living. This efficiency has seen Melbourne create the most affordably priced greenfield lots of any large Australian city.

At Beveridge Williams, we realised that, like the industry in a broader sense, operating our services in silos was inefficient and ineffective.

We asked ourselves: what do our clients want? And we realised it was the same as what we asked of the industry – efficiency, effectiveness and a coordinated approach. We are one of Australia’s leading multi-service land development consultancies, with a customer focus on delivering our services in a coordinated manner. Our clients include Australia’s leading land development companies and we work on some of the largest greenfield developments.

As an industry leader, Beveridge Williams recognised that simply delivering the physical infrastructure to a growth area was only the start. As an industry, we needed to provide more to the new residents.

We helped to create two ‘Demonstration Projects’ – Selandra Rise and St Germain Village – that focus on providing new communities with access to social and medical services, and local job opportunities, as they moved into the estate.

Selandra Rise is recognised nationally as a project that delivered benefits to new communities for health and sustainability and a focal point in a newly developing greenfield area. St Germain will focus on the early delivery of extensive community infrastructure including medical facilities and local jobs well in advance of normal timing.

These projects, as well as our broader suite of work, challenge the industry to deliver more than homes and roads in greenfield areas. To provide equitable access of new communities to the services and local jobs that any family needs.

Creating new communities in a coordinated manner is what excites us, and at Beveridge Williams we are proud of our role in the industry.
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