MLC Campus Revitalisation

105 Miller St: the revitalisation of a Sydney icon

The iconic 105 Miller St, North Sydney has undergone a major refurbishment. Originally built in 1957 to house MLC, the building was the tallest building in Australia at completion. Today, the building is owned by Investa and tenanted solely by MLC, a NAB Wealth company. The refurbishment project, under NAB project lead Nick Worrall and Gallagher Jeffs Consulting, was designed by Woods Bagot to include a flexible working fitout, throughout all 25,000m2 of the building plus upgrades to the entry foyer, base building amenities as well as major fire, mechanical and lift upgrades.

The complex retrofit and flexible workspace project was delivered in a fully occupied building, with staff being compressed into available space on ‘business as usual’ floors while retrofit works are undertaken on a floor by floor basis. The complete revitalisation of this iconic building is was completed in March 2013 and MLC staff have embraced their new workplace with great excitement.

Change management – flexible working and organisational change

As well as managing the cost, risk, design and technical construction aspects of this heritage refurbishment project, the workplace design of the project is being delivered in line with a programme of organisational and cultural change within NAB with the new workspace maximising the impact of the business changes.

“With a variety of furniture settings that allow for anything from instant and effective collaboration to concentrated work, our people have the freedom to choose how they want to work and when. Freed from the constraints of being tied to a desk, a LAN cable and a meeting room booking system, Campus residents can now change and adapt quickly to the needs of our business and their personal preference”, says Caroline Boyce, Program Manager, NAB.

Churn management – construction in an occupied building with heritage challenges

The refurbishment and fitout were delivered on a staged basis; 2 floors being vacated for construction works at a time while the other 10 operate under business as usual conditions. As the retrofit and workspace fitout of each floor were completed, personnel were relocated into the new space, leaving an empty floor on which construction works can begin.  Joanne Cunningham, Senior Project Manager from Gallagher Jeffs: “We’ve put a lot of effort into the staging of the works, planning the relocation churns and minimising the impact of the constant works on the building tenants. If you walked into the building on a business day while the floor by floor works are being done, you’d have no idea there were construction works going on; there’s no noise or visual evidence anywhere. When it comes to churning staff, we do the move on weekends and the real test of our success is whether or not people are conducting business as usual by 10am on the following Monday.”

Sneak peak: A look inside the completed MLC Campus project

Produced by Tyrone Brannigan Productions