Business View Oceania | May 2021

51 52 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MAY 2021 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MAY 2021 Quality You Can Rely On We’ve grown accustomed to working with companies of all sizes, and providing hard working people. We enjoy putting our minds together to deliver quality that adhere to the highest standards of our customers. DP Formwork is a progressive labour hire company, supplying highly skilled labour across Australia. DP Formwork was formed to engage well equipped, highly skilled workers for formwork, labourers, carpentry and concretors . www.dpformwork.com.au info@dpformwork.com.au HI CKORY which has now evolved into what we call the Hickory Building System, or HBS.” Another project that has benefitted hugely from Hickory’s bespoke construction technology is Collins House. The 60 level, 184-metre project situated in central Melbourne on a site footprint the size of a netball court won the 2021 CTBUH Construction Awards for Excellence but might not have been built at all without Hickory’s input. “With Collins House, we unlocked that project by building it with our system, assigning it a contract of 29 months and completing it within that timeframe. It was only through our system that the project became financially viable for the client.” Of course, no business has been able to avoid the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic over the last year. Fortunately, HBS again proved essential, ensuring that project deadlines could be met despite the pandemic. “Because our system means that problem for the industry, so over the last decade we’ve looked at prefabrication and other new ways of constructing buildings.” The journey that Hickory has been on has not been without its challenges. However, the transition to becoming an independent, holistic, and forward-thinking company has ultimately led to high quality, more creative, and safer buildings. “Our Melbourne-based factory is now over six hectares in area, allowing Hickory to re-onshore the manufacturing process keeping jobs in Australia,” Argyrou notes. “We do SYNC modular bathroom pods, modular kitchens, bespoke fit-out elements, we do our own precast and we have a pre-assembly area where all the different parts go. We believe a building is made up of interchangeable parts. It’s no different to the car industry, which has been innovating for many years. It’s time the construction sector caught up.” For Hickory, however, it’s essential that innovation doesn’t just represent faster construction, particularly if it leads to homogenised output. “We believe in the standardization of interchangeable parts but we don’t believe in standard buildings,” Argyrou says. “Unfortunately, the world is heading that way to some extent for affordability reasons, but I’m strongly against it. I think architects should be able to express their creativity to deliver the best results for the community, the area it’s located in and the end-user – not simply follow a standardized approach.” Exemplifying this commitment to creativity are several building projects that the company has worked on in recent years, like Hawthorn Park and Victoriana. “Not all of our buildings begin as prefabrication,” Argyrou comments. “A lot of them are produced conventionally. In fact, we don’t even like the word prefabrication – we prefer to talk about ‘construction to production’. Many years ago, we started using volumetric construction for our buildings,