Helicopter aircrew training system facilities

The facilities delivered under this project support a Helicopter Aircrew Training System (HATS) for all Australian Navy and Army rotary wing pilots.

The non-airside portion includes a state-of-the-art synthetic training environment, including full flight simulators and highly specialised task trainers. The airside facility provides a live training environment with hangars, maintenance facilities and an operational flight line to accommodate the training system’s helicopters. Additionally, the project delivered a 96-bed accommodation block for students and geographically dispersed training facilities to support off-base live training exercises.

Our role

Currie & Brown provided cost management, property and development, project management and programming services for the project. Specific tasks include:

• Reviewing requirements to ensure the best solutions were delivered
• Drafting federal government business cases to secure project funding
• Supporting Defence as part of the parliamentary approval process
• Managing all project procurement activities in planning and delivery phase
• Administering and managing all project contracts
• Reviewing all contract project cost planning deliverables on behalf of the client
• Representing the federal government at parliamentary approvals

The project was driven by a capability date, and we instigated mitigation measures to best procure and undertake the design and construction to minimise risk to the programme.

The project contained many risks, mainly programme-related, but also with respect to cost as the client was required to maintain the government-approved budget. It was also critical that the project met high quality standards to ensure that defects were minimised because now the buildings are occupied there is restricted access for trades. We facilitated risk management reviews at regular intervals to mitigate these risks.