Background
Located in the heart of Sydney’s Lower North Shore and just 5kms from Sydney CBD, St Leonards is home to luxury residences, the headquarters of countless major brands and businesses and an impressive array of restaurants, shops and greenspaces. While location has always been one of St Leonards’ main selling points, the latest project from multi award-winning developer, Mirvac adds an enviable lifestyle opportunity to the area. St Leonards Square is a combination of 560 luxury residential apartments and commercial offices, offering residents a vibrant ground floor plaza, state-of-the-art facilities – including a private spa and pool, gym, music room, movie theatre, lounge areas and more – and exceptional city and Sydney Harbour views.
Challenge
With the majority of the project selling off-plan, Mirvac needed to ensure that the project ran smoothly and that quality wasn’t compromised at any level. For Andrew Hogben, Procurement Manager at Mirvac, enlisting the help of trusted suppliers was critical to the project’s success. “This is very much a luxury lifestyle project, so we needed fixtures and fittings that are best-of-breed; that look the part but will also stand the test of time. We also had a very aggressive schedule to ensure buyers could move in on time, so delays were not an option for us”, Hogben reveals.
Solution
Having worked closely with GWA on many previous developments, Hogben and his team knew that Caroma would be the best choice for St Leonards Square and were quick to specify a range of GWA brands; including, Caroma tapware and accessories, Clark sinks and laundry products and Caroma Liano sink mixers – which combine a WELS 6 star rating with an impressive 10 year warranty across the entire development. To add an extra layer of efficiency and quality assurance to the project, Mirvac chose an innovative modular building methodology, where bathrooms are manufactured and packaged into ‘pods’ before they reach the building site. The pod method, managed by Hickory Building Systems, is a cutting-edge concept that not only ensures ultimate ease of installation on-site, but means bathrooms remain in pristine condition and untouched until the project is in its final stages. “Pods are safer, more efficient, remove waste, and ultimately result in better bathroom installations; but they are also significantly more complicated to manage from a supply chain perspective” Hogben reveals. “That’s where working with a market leader, like Caroma, really pays off. We knew they would be capable of working with us to ensure the process ran smoothly, delivering the right products at the right time. The project went fantastically well, and working with experts such as Caroma was a crucial part of that success”.
