Case Studies

Background

The Gold Coast is probably best known for its tourism, beaches and hinterland and laid-back lifestyle. However, the Gold Coast is also home to a numerous universities and world class health services. A hub of the health and education sector is the 200-hectare Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct (GCHKP). The co-location of Griffith University, the Gold Coast University Hospital and the Gold Coast Private Hospital sets the precinct up as a global business location for high-tech industry development, research collaboration and to accommodate the jobs of the future.

The precinct is supported by $5 billion in infrastructure, covering Griffith University, public and private hospitals and a combination of expertise, transport and telecommunications infrastructure, land and lifestyle. The precinct is intended to support 12,400 new high-value jobs to ultimately support over 26,000 full-time equivalent positions.

Driving the vision and intent of the GCHKP is a dedicated Project Office. The GCHKP Project Office is actively working on behalf of City of Gold Coast, Griffith University and Gold Coast Health to ensure the delivery of a world-class hub of knowledge, innovation, employment and investment.

Project Goals

There are a multitude of challenges faced by local economies in an evolving, more knowledge-intensive and increasingly ‘globalised’ economic environment. This makes it necessary for cities and regions to demonstrate competitiveness and capacity to innovate and to evolve in order to attract business investment and to stimulate economic growth. A key requirement for the GCHKP is to evaluate its activities and outcomes to realise its vision as well as to monitor its progress in terms of how it evolves from its current baseline.

The overarching goal of the project was to assess and report on the outcomes of the GCHKP Project Office against set objectives, establish a reporting baseline for the Precinct and assess the Precinct’s economic impacts.

REMPLAN’s Involvement

REMPLAN delivered a number of elements through several phases of the project, ranging from stakeholder surveys through to an online dashboard development. A summary of REMPLAN’s involvement through the following deliverables:  :

• Data review including an evaluation of the client’s CRM and databases to assess suitability to report on Project Offices.
• Preparation and assessment of a survey for key partners, stakeholders and businesses within the precinct to understand the current level of activity occurring in the precinct as well as planned initiatives to increase activity.
• Development of a project monitoring framework which included a custom online dashboard to monitor changes in key performance indicators.
• Reporting the outcomes against agreed Performance Objectives of the GCHKP Project Office.
• Preparation of an economic impact assessment (EIA) to determine the broader economic benefit that is being delivered through the GCHKP for local businesses.

Preparation of a benchmark EIA for the 2018 Commonwealth Games Parklands Precinct.

Results

REMPLAN’s analysis, delivered through a detailed report, provided a comprehensive baseline of the Precinct’s performance against key metrics. The project monitoring framework gives the Project Office clear quantifiable metrics to report against, while the custom dashboard delivers this information in a format that is both easy to interpret and access.