In these cooler months, my weekends often begin with an appearance at an awards event.
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Last week, I was at Albury’s commercial club helping to present the Regional Building Awards to the residential and commercial builders of your community.
It was a nice way to close the week.
As I’ve come to expect from this part of Victoria, the projects gave me plenty to linger over.
It’s one of the perks of my job as CEO to look at photos of—and sometimes even visit—the newest projects completed by our local members.
There is a lot of interesting work happening here in the Albury-Wodonga area, and that is a trend we’re seeing in many regional communities throughout Victoria as our state grows at a rapid pace— indeed the fastest of any state in the country.
Since 2011, Victoria has grown by more than 570,000 people—nearly 11 per cent*.
And because of this, the Regional Building Awards— which occur in all four corners of the state— take on a significance that they haven’t always had.
But here in the north east we toasted Lekeal Pty Ltd and, for the second consecutive year, Zauner Construction as the 2017 North East Master Builders of the Year.
Leakeal built a very smart-looking home in Yarrawonga that overlooks Lake Mulwala.
Zauner, our serial winner, did some really excellent work with their construction of Trinity Anglican College’s new senior school in Thurgoona.
This double-storey building has a plan that relaxes the form of traditional classroom setting by using walls that are offset, angled and openable to define spaces without hard edges.
The photos don’t really do justice to the work, though.
After all, each one of the projects we received for consideration was built for people to use, not to admire from afar.
If you have the chance to see them for yourselves, please do so.
You are surrounded by high-calibre work in a wide circle, reaching from Albury to Mulwala, Shepparton to Yea, Benalla to Wangaratta.
Building and construction in regional communities are as central to Victoria’s future as they are in Melbourne and its suburbs.
A quick skim of the daily news is all it takes to see that our elected officials are counting on regional areas to rise to the challenge of keeping Victoria a great place to live and do business by building as though every project has an influence on the community.
And, I’m sure you’ll agree, they do.