The ACT’s new ‘wooden campus’ welcomed its first batch of students on Monday, July 21, right in time for the first day of the Canberra Institute of Technology’s (CIT) second semester. According to Michael Pettersson, Minister for Skills, Training, and Industrial Relations, the new “smart campus” is a game changer for delivering vocational education in the ACT.
“We promised to deliver a world-class education precinct in Woden, and we’ve delivered,” Minister Pettersson said. “The training facilities and learning spaces at the new CIT Woden are second to none. Students of all ages are going to love this modern and sustainable facility, and we’ve already had a lot of positive feedback from CIT staff who are starting to feel right at home in these surroundings.”
Built by Lendlease, the new 22,500-square-metre building—Canberra’s first education build to use smart building technology—uses a MASSLAM 45 post and beam frame, while Xlam provided the cross-laminated timber floor, which together is helping the project target a 6-star Green Star rating.
“In total, more than 900 MASSLAM 45 (glue-laminated timber) columns and beams were provided for the project,” according to Daniel Wright, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods National Business Development Manager, who spoke to Wood Central following the building’s top-out last year.
“We informed connection design and detailing, specialist timber advice, CNC work, connections, pre-attachment and delivery in lifting sequence.” In addition, “special work was done on a creative new column base connection and temporary column propping – implementing our lessons and ideas we’ve developed over time.”
“One of the advantages of this project is we have been involved in the project for quite a while now, and that has allowed us to identify the critical wait time items that present the most risk and place early orders in collaboration with the Territory to mitigate those risks to ensure the materials arrive on time,” said Ben Owen, Lendlease’s general manager, who in 2022, was awarded the $325m contract to develop the campus. According to Chris Barr, ACT’s Chief Minister, “CIT Woden is part of Canberra’s billion-dollar education build, with more investment in the right infrastructure to support skills, students, schools and educators.”
Wood Central understands that the new campus will see students at the current CIT Read campus now relocate to Woden to allow for the development of a new UNSW campus in the heart of Canberra, strengthening CIT’s existing campuses in Fyshwick, Bruce, Gungahlin, and Tuggeranong.
Mass timber construction is on the rise across the nation’s capital. In 2023, the ACT government revealed plans to build a six-storey commercial tower using a hybrid steel-and-timber system in the heart of the iconic Constitutional Place.
Designed by Bates Smart, the same architect who designed Constitutional Place, the six-level office tower will use a hybrid timber construction system, “where part of the building structure and fabric will be built from sustainable timber, further reducing the building’s carbon footprint.”
