Deakin University Waurn Ponds — Student Village

The Project

The Deakin University Student Village at Waurn Ponds is a purpose-built residential precinct set within the wooded landscape of Deakin's Geelong campus. Designed by Nettleton Tribe, the village is organised around a central Village Green and Town Hall, with clusters of low-rise townhouses and flats radiating outward. The precinct includes the FX Building, a fitness and social hub, along with administration facilities and extensive native planting. It was designed to feel like a real neighbourhood, not a dormitory block.

The Challenge

This was a large, multi-building project spanning residential clusters, communal amenity, landscape works, and a new campus precinct masterplan, all on a live university campus. Finding a head contractor who could deliver across all of those components simultaneously, with genuine campus experience, required a structured and carefully managed procurement process. As a Victorian project, it also meant our Sydney team needed to work closely with Root Partnerships' Melbourne office to bring the right expertise to the table.

My Approach

I supported the Melbourne office with the preparation of the tender package and the management of the head contractor procurement process. The scope covered the full breadth of the precinct, residential buildings, the Village Green and Town Hall, the FX hub, and the broader landscape programme. My role was to draw on my experience structuring multi-building procurement exercises and help shape a tender process that would identify and appoint a D&C contractor capable of delivering the whole village as a cohesive piece of campus infrastructure.

The Outcome

The Student Village was completed and is now a genuine social heart for the Waurn Ponds campus. The FX hub and Town Hall have become focal points for student life, and the native landscape setting of winding paths, planted courtyards and the Village Green gives the precinct a sense of place you rarely see in student accommodation. Working across state lines on a project of this scale reinforced my ability to collaborate remotely, structure procurement for complex briefs, and deliver outcomes that hold together as more than the sum of their parts. That cross-office, multi-stakeholder coordination is something I rely on daily at Yaxley Studio.