Welcome to the inaugural edition or Bluetongue our online magazine and internal information portal. A place where we can share information about Urbis with one another to build a better business.

Congratulations to Nathaniel Jeffrey for coming up with the name Bluetongue. The judges chose this name because:

• It has a distinctly Australian feel.
• It evokes a sense of communication and speaking, being the voice of Urbis.
• It doesn’t try to use Urbis in its name (too corny and predictable thought the judges) or other clichés.
• The ‘blue’ subtly reflects the Urbis ‘cyan’ without being too obvious.
• It has a good ‘ring’ to it

Please enjoy the magazine and make sure you use the feedback options. The more you ask the better the information will be.

John Wynne

As Urbis continues to grow we are always looking to reward our staff and that means staff at all levels including Directors. Urbis is a privately owned company, where the owners (Partners) all work actively in the business. The offer to take up Partnership is a very significant achievement and reward for those attaining the highest standards of professional and personal performance.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the appointment of four new Partners at Urbis, being:

• Bret Fleming – Melbourne Planning
• Jack Backen – International Property Economics
• Stephen White – Sydney Planning
• Ashley Lane – Brisbane Planning

Each of the four new Partners are already significant contributors to Urbis and possess the necessary attributes to continue to develop as leading professionals enhancing the reputation of Urbis. We are excited about each of these people joining the growing Partner group (which is now 34 people) and to helping shape the direction and shape of Urbis going forward.

We hope that all of you reading this article set yourselves the goal to become partners and leaders of this business. It isn’t an easy road and I hope you take the time to congratulate these people on their significant achievements.

John Wynne

Urbis was commissioned by AMP Capital to lead and manage the design competition process for the Quay Quarter Sydney project. This is one of the largest and most significant invited design competitions held in Sydney involving 6 highly renowned and decorated architects including 5 international architectural practices.

The role of Urbis has included in association with the AMPC Project Team, leading the preparation of the competition brief, the management of all correspondence and advice to the architects during the competition, the management of the briefing and presentation sessions and ultimately the preparation of the competition jury report. Urbis has worked closely with the City of Sydney to ensure that the requirements of Council’s Competitive Design Policy were met at all times. The competition process has extended over an approximate 6 month period and has culminated in a great design response for the site, which Urbis will continue to assist AMP Capital through the Stage 2 DA approval process.

IKEA’s retail mall development arm, Ikano, are in the process of expanding their Asian footprint.  The Urbis IPE team have been advising them on a series of projects in Malaysia, including the development of new IKEA-led malls of regional scale in Penang and Johor Bahru, and more recently on the redevelopment of IPC Damansara, a sub-regional shopping centre which is co-located with Malaysia’s only currently operating IKEA store.  This work has required the IPE team to develop a detailed understanding of the functioning of IKEA as a retailer, as well as the impact that it has upon the malls it is located within.  The work on IPC Damansara has also required the IPE team to forecast the sales growth and cannibalisation effects of adding a second store into a city previously served by only one.  The team has based these forecasts in part upon detailed analysis of postcode data collected at the tills by IKEA in Australia, with particular reference to the impact of opening Melbourne’s Springvale store upon the existing property at Victoria Gardens in Richmond.  This analysis showed distinct behavioural patterns amongst IKEA shoppers that informed the assessment of the impact of a second store in Kuala Lumpur.  Having completed this assessment, the IPE team has worked with The Buchan Group to develop two alternative options for the redevelopment and enhancement of the shopping centre to secure its future in an increasingly competitive market.

This project is for internal information only and is externally confidential.

Urbis was commissioned by Brisbane City Council to prepare a Renewal Strategy for Spring Hill, Brisbane’s first suburb. This renewal strategy will set the framework for the development of a new Neighbourhood Plan for Spring Hill to replace the existing one that was prepared in the late 1970’s and has never been updated.

Located on the door-step of the city centre, surrounded by parklands and rich with heritage, Spring Hill represents one of Brisbane’s most unique opportunities to deliver a true mixed-use community in the heart of the city.  Urbis’ multi-disciplinary team included planning, design, property and heritage expertise to develop a strategy that facilitates growth while protecting and enhancing the character and other unique aspects that make the suburb special.

Over the past 10 years, Brisbane’s changing office environment has seen  the expansion of the city centre into locations which can accommodate large format floorplates, seeing the migration of commercial activity out of Spring Hill.

Urbis’ team prepared a detailed strategy that identified key outcomes to ensure the future economic sustainability of Spring Hill including accommodating the expanding city centre through improved transport access, supporting the on-going growth of health and education institutions and unlocking key redevelopment sites to attract a growing residential population. The team then identified 3 key catalyst public realm projects to unlock development potential including creating a local heart for residents and an eat street for commercial activity.

FY15 has started strongly for Urbis, with the company and most business units enjoying strong workflow enabling performance in line with or ahead of budgets.

Bruce Morrison (Melbourne) 
Finance Director 
Business Services
03 8663 4835
0408 146 397

Urbis is of course a client focused organisation and in order to foster the relationships we have with clients we are always looking at ways to better engage with them. Engagement techniques are always developing and improving but at the end of the day nothing works better than sitting down face to face and building a trusting relationship. Outside of that we’d like to show you what’s working around the traps. Here are some of the best campaigns, events and other initiatives that are getting results and winning over our clients.

Campaigns

• 2014 Urbis Shopping Centre Benchmarks
• 10 Activity Centre Insights – This campaign is utilising our new online publication tool.

Events

Big Ideas for a small state – A round table discussion for 7 key clients C-suite executives. The Grattan Institutes John Daley, John Wynne and Melb Office Directors discuss the policy priorities for the next Victorian government.

Melbourne Cup Sydney Event – 80 clients and 20 staff living it up at Randwick for a cocktail style event.

Strategic Engagement

Defence Housing Australia(DHA) – After winning our way onto the panel for the DHA Urbis is getting on the front foot and building a national strategy to engage with this potentially large client. This is a perfect example of working across business units and offices to achieve the true definition of one Urbis. So far the team has strategised over a few video conferences, built a strategy and is now working on their engagement plan. Team members include Darren Mew, Matt Cleary, Ray Haeren, Peter Fitzgerald, Clare Brown, Paul Quinlan and Aloni Benau.

If you have anything you’d like to highlight in this section please contact Aloni using the below button.

At Urbis we constantly try and build our brand and part of this means getting our faces in the media as industry thought leaders and commentators. By nature we are a conservative group of individuals but we do have those who are willing to step out of the shadows and be the spokespeople we need.

What we have below is a link to some of the media we have managed to gain over the last month,

EMR Urbis Shopping Centre Benchmarks, The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/property/stockland-pays-59m-for-stake-in-bundaberg-shopping-centre/story-fn9656lz-1227088531603?nk=3191e1d127b2b1eac530d7aa497e1bd9

Urbis Research, Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/land-for-cemetery-snapped-up-20140916-10hnlj.html

Design Brisbane, Architecture and Design

http://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/news/architects-push-for-heritage-listing-of-queensland

Roger Gibbons, Herald Sun

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/melbourne-faces-future-shock-with-booming-population/story-fni0fit3-1227084318765

If you have any questions or would like to have an article you were involved with profiled please contact Lize Biermann.

Lize Biermann (Melbourne) 
Marketing Consultant 
Business Services
03 8663 4887

As a business unit Sydney Urban Planning (SUP) was established in 1994 with its first ever employee being Helen Deegan. In 1995 our very own John Wynne was chosen to lead the charge into the potentially very lucrative Sydney market. SUP did in no way start of as a lucrative business with initial revenue targets south of $500k. SUP was on the move and by 2000 the team had grown to 6 people and a revenue target of around $1.5m. Fast forward another ten years and  SUP had managed to  negotiate the GFC grown to 27 people with 4 directors, 7 AD’s and revenue targets of $5.5m.

SUP today is one of the businesses fastest growing teams and a corner stone for the success of the Sydney office. The teams original leader has gone on to become MD and SUP now has 34 staff which includes 6 Directors, 8 AD’s and a revenue target of $7.1m.

At the moment the business is humming and growing at its fastest rate ever. Much of this success can be attributed to a number of factors:

• Been successful in a strong residential market and have attracted new oversees clients (mainly Chinese) through good profiling and networks
• Have seen an expanded client base through overseas investors and the ‘splintering’ of local institutional client groups, whose individuals have ‘taken Urbis with them’.
• Involved in many City projects with strong presence and role in many design competitions
• Well known to City Council, Department of Planning and key industry groups.
• Had built up strong experience in Clubs work and retirement/aged care

The SUP team are now up to job No SA5570 and growing strongly with appointments from the director level down. The biggest issue today is where we seat our ever expanding team.

SUP Projects:

• SA1976C_Coal and Allied Lower Hunter Land Review PP
• SA4568 – Leighton Properties Bondi Junction-PP
• SA4723 Bega Valley Hospital-PP
• SA5087 Potts Hill-PP

News – Replacing all Fuji-Xerox Printers

Our fast growth and increased business innovation have been driving further investments in infrastructure. This year the IT team have installed new firewalls, internet capacity, local network upgrades, increased server capacity and delivered more than 50 new laptops, PCs and workstations for staff. We’re currently working on replacing all the Fuji-Xerox printers in all offices.

New Phone System

All offices are now on our new phone system so it’s now even easier to call each other. For Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane numbers you dial using the just the last four digits of the phone number (for example, Melbourne reception is 4888). For Perth staff dial 5 followed by the last three digits (for example, Perth reception is 5500).

Information Spotlight

The Housing Affordability Report is recognised as the most authoritative indicator of Australian housing affordability currently available. Data is gathered from all major lending institutions, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Cannex Ltd. Median weekly family income figures are based on ABS Family Income Surveys, and are updated from ABS Average Weekly Earnings data. Check out the Library portal on the intranet to find out more and access the report.

Innovation Spotlight

We’ve recently launched a new service for securely sharing files with clients and others. This can be to support a specific project (such as the recent Quay Quarter design competition run by Sydney Planning for AMP) or to support service delivery for long-term clients (such as our on-going Planning work with PEET). Please call or email Vivienne Collins, Data Manager to find out more.

Andrew Mitchell (Melbourne)
National ICT Manager
Information, Communications & Technology
03 8663 4860
0419 599 744

David Cresp – Director 
Economics & Market Research

08 9346 0503
0431 550 953
dcresp@urbis.com.au

Download CV

We are pleased to announce ‘Above and Beyond’ as our new company wide, staff recognition awards.

We are fortunate to enjoy a great workplace where people work hard and strive to achieve great outcomes for both clients and Urbis. Above and Beyond is focussed on recognising that definitive extra contribution from an individual or small team which surpasses our high expectations and adds value to a project or activity beyond what we could reasonably expect.

Nominations for firm wide recognition of individual or small teams (less than 5 people) may be made by Directors, Associate Directors and Senior Managers under one of the following program categories:

• Best client feedback - recognising outstanding feedback from a client regarding the advancement of the Urbis reputation.
• Innovation initiatives – recognising initiatives contributing to the introduction of new or improved ways of going about things at Urbis.
• One Urbis award – for contributions and actions to the broader interests of the firm.

Every person nominated (including those in small teams) will receive a gift certificate to the value of $75. All individual winners will receive a gift certificate to the value of $400. Where 2-5 people jointly win an award (as a small team), each person will receive a gift certificate to the value of $150.

Above and Beyond complements other team based awards, where individuals and larger teams are recognised specifically for business unit focussed outstanding contributions.

The Managing Director will determine the winners of the Above and Beyond awards, with details to published in ‘THE MAGAZINE NAME’. Further details on the Above and Beyond awards can be provided by the HR team.