Lark Hill Sportsplex, Rockingham
CLIENT BRIEF:
Benchmark Projects was contracted to lead a consultant team comprising architects, engineers, cost planners, recreation consultants, environmental consultants and property advisors, to produce a comprehensive feasibility study and master plan for the Lark Hill Sports Complex for the City of Rockingham, located to the south-west of Perth.
BENCHMARK’S ACHIEVEMENTS:
Benchmark Projects provided preliminary designs, budgets, timing and recommend staging and management options.
Benchmark was able to demonstrate to the City through the business case process, a value for money outcome and a significant social benefit to the residents of the Rockingham-Mandurah-Peel region.
Benchmark placed a major focus on risk management planning including the completion of a detailed Environmental Management Strategy and extensive groundwater modelling studies in order to facilitate development at the site.
Activities undertaken under risk management planning strategy included:
- Stakeholder management
- Project governance
- Business Case preparation
- Project reporting
- Risk planning
- Cost and time management
BACKGROUND:
The City of Rockingham, in partnership with the Western Australian Planning Commission established a major sporting and recreation reserve at Lark Hill, Rockingham in 2007. It serves the rapidly expanding population of the South-West Corridor of the Perth metropolitan area, and more specifically the Rockingham-Mandurah-Peel region.
The complex occupies 260 hectares of land midway between Rockingham and Mandurah and offers significant opportunities for a large number of sporting and community uses including rugby, soccer, softball, cricket and hockey. Lark Hill also contains one of only two full sized all weather horse racing tracks in the State.
Lark Hill Sportsplex has been designed using first rate sustainability principles and has a $2 million innovative groundwater harvesting scheme in place. Groundwater is pumped from existing reserves in nearby Port Kennedy, helping to alleviate the area’s rising water table. The water is then held in an irrigation lake at Lark Hill and used to water the complex without drawing groundwater from the surrounding wetlands. A 4.5 km network of walk trails winds through 21 identified threatened ecological wetland areas that are part of the Lark Hill development.
Stage one of the Sportsplex is now complete and incorporates 35 hectares of first-class sports surfaces – the equivalent of more than 30 WACA cricket grounds.
Close to 100,000 people will use the facility each year, making it one of the largest facilities of its kind in Western Australia.
