“Expert advice from Architecture & Access enabled us to complete our Disability Action Plan. We then engaged them to project manage the accessibility upgrade of our existing buildings.”
Services for local government
Architecture & Access understands the role of local government and its multi-faceted obligations:
- In planning and providing for the needs of children and adults with a disability, ageing residents and the wider community
- In promoting equal opportunity, social inclusion and enjoyment of human rights
- Enabling access to the built environment
- Supporting local retailers and business
- As an employer.
Our staff are access experts across a range of professions including work health & safety, access consulting, project management, architecture and design, home modification, landscape design, interior design, and occupational therapy.
Architecture & Access has significant experience providing specialist access consulting, design, OHS and project management to assist local government to create safe and accessible infrastructure, buildings and places for people with disability and the wider community.
We offer an integrated, cross-departmental approach to access service delivery, working directly with you to:
- Enable efficiency on access consulting, project planning and capital program budgets
- Confidently deliver projects that meet Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requirements, community needs, and prevent discrimination
- Prevent costly redesign, retrofitting and complaints
- Better consider access requirements at key stages of project planning and development
- Ensure consistency in quality, design and implementation of access solutions for council infrastructure, buildings, places and events.
Our services include:
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We can assist you to ensure traders and service providers comply with accessibility requirements where there is a change of use for retail and commercial tenancies, and wherever a building permit is required.
Consulting closely with all stakeholders including planners, people with disability, their families and service providers, we ensure design solutions meet the requirements of universal access and specific community needs.
Access consulting
We can provide advice, design and delivery of accessibility objectives of new developments and renovations including:
- Car parking and drop-off zones
- External path and landscaping
- Building entrances
- Internal circulation
- Sanitary facilities
- Signage
- Internal fit-out – Kitchen facilities and furniture
- Hearing augmentation
- Access to swimming pools
Project management
Our project managers have extensive experience delivering projects with key accessibility objectives for local government including:
- Civic centres and community meeting rooms
- Child care centres and maternal and child health facilities
- Senior citizens and club facilities
- Libraries, museums and art galleries
- Town halls and heritage buildings
- Workplaces
- Parks, sporting venues, swimming pools and leisure centres.
Working with architects and designers, structural engineers, building surveyors and council planners, we ensure your projects achieve compliance with the DDA, National Construction Code – Building Code of Australia, referenced Australian Standards and local planning requirements.
Providing the smoothest possible planning to construction process, we take care of every aspect while keeping people informed of progress.
More about project management.
Understanding and meeting your Safety in Design obligations as a building owner
Architecture & Access are specialists in Safety in Design and can assists councils to understand and meet obligations under the law.
Our services are concerned with highlighting hazards, assessing risks, recommending controls and evaluating processes to ensure safety is integral to design throughout the life cycle of a building.
Under the Work Health & Safety Act 2011 and Regulations and OHS laws, councils commissioning new work or renovation of an existing structure must consult with the designer to ensure that any risks to work health & safety arising from the design during the construction work are eliminated or minimised.
If the project is a new or refurbished workplace, the council must consult with the workers at the planning stage to ascertain any possible effects on their health & safety posed by the new design and provide this information to the designer.
Our services include:
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Education and training
Training workshops specifically developed for local government staff with responsibilities to enable access – frontline staff, service providers, architects and designers, statutory planners, building maintenance and asset managers, event managers, capital works and major projects program managers, building certifiers, traffic and parking infrastructure teams, and others include:
- Understanding legislation and requirements for enabling access to buildings
- Understanding and enabling access on various environments – parks, sport and recreation facilities, pedestrian areas.
- Disability awareness training
- Universal design principles
- Developing and implementing disability access plans
- Undertaking/interpreting access audits and prioritising building upgrades
- Livable Housing Guidelines
- Training courses leading to qualifications in access consulting.
Workplace health & safety support
We can recommend, design and deliver solutions to create safe and healthy workplaces.
Our services include:
- Access consulting
- Safe induction or return to work for people with an injury or disability
- Review of work health & safety policies
- Selection of equipment
- Workstation design
- Ergonomics assessment
- Assessing homes for the safe delivery of community services by your employees and agents
- Education and training.
What councils can expect from Architecture and Access
When you engage with Architecture & Access you can expect:
- Experienced access specialists
- Transparency
- Value for money
- Consideration of equal opportunity and human rights obligations
- Compliance with building control legislation, regulations and local policies
- Consultative and collaborative methodology
- Rigorous management of time, cost and quality.
Contact us for a conversation about your requirements.