Sydney City Hub — 231 Elizabeth Street

The Project

The Sydney City Hub at 231 Elizabeth Street is one of the NSW Government's flagship workplace consolidation projects, a 15-storey commercial building near Hyde Park transformed into a multi-agency hub for the public sector. Delivered in partnership with Charter Hall, the project created roughly 21,600 sqm of A-Grade fitout across Levels 1 to 15, consolidating staff from multiple government agencies and establishing a pioneering whole-of-government "touchdown" workspace, a flexible, activity-based working environment that set a new benchmark for government workplace design in NSW.

The Challenge

I joined this project as it entered its final construction phases, which meant inheriting a live, partially occupied building with 14 floors of defects to coordinate, an active pipeline of change requests from multiple government agency occupants, and a construction close-out to manage with Shape Australia. On top of that, a separate second procurement was needed, the Level 1 fitout had to be designed, tendered, and delivered under a new contract with a different contractor, all while the rest of the building was in operation around us.

My Approach

I took over as Project Manager for Property & Development NSW and managed the close-out of the Floors 2–15 fitout, running the defects liability period with Shape Australia, coordinating rectification works, administering variation claims, and handling the steady stream of agency change requests. Once the upper floors were closed out, I led the full design management and contractor procurement for the Level 1 fitout, appointing Built as the new contractor and providing superintendent services through construction. Managing two distinct contract relationships on the same building, with different contractors, scopes, and programme pressures, required careful sequencing and clear boundaries.

The Outcome

The Sydney City Hub opened as one of the NSW Government's most significant metropolitan workplaces, and the touchdown concept pioneered here has since been replicated across regional government hubs statewide. Completing the Level 1 fitout brought the building's full programme together: the ground-level collaborative and public-facing spaces that finished the hub as intended. This project gave me deep experience in the messy, unglamorous end of delivery: close-out, defects, and multi-stakeholder coordination on occupied buildings. That turns out to be exactly where most projects need the most help. That practical, hands-on delivery experience is central to how I run Yaxley Studio.