Northerly wins $15m Rio airport project

SUBIACO-BASED building and construction outfit Northerly Group has been appointed to create a $15 million office building for Rio Tinto at Perth Airport.

The building, to be located on the corner of George Wiencke Drive and Dunreath Drive near the domestic terminal, will be the third Rio has built at Perth Airport and will house around 220 staff.

The project will be named Echo 2 to complement the existing Rio Tinto office development, Echo, and its operations centre on the airport estate. 

Echo 2 has been designed to achieve a five-star green star rating and a four-and-a-half star NABERS environmental rating.

Construction on the three-level, 4,000 square metre building is set to begin early next month, and be completed by late next year.

Rio Tinto chief operating officer for Pilbara services, Dale Harris, said the new space at Echo 2 would help the company increase its iron ore production capacity from 225 million tonnes to 353mt per year.

“Just as the operations centre quickly developed from a useful concept to a key command centre for our integrated production network, so has our presence in the airport precinct grown rapidly in terms of its footprint and significance,” Mr Harris said. 

The Northerly project follows on from the announcement last month by Roy Hill Holdings that Bunbury-based Perkins Builders had been contracted to construct a $46 million corporate headquarters at Perth Airport.

Perkins has begun construction on the 9,000sqm office facility, which includes basement parking for 100 cars as well as a remote operations centre for the Hancock Prospecting subsidiary.

Perth Airport chief executive Brad Geatches said Echo 2 was the start of a planned expansion of the office park at Perth Airport.

“The land where the complex is being built was not required for aviation purposes, so we are putting it to great uses by providing
further office space for Rio Tinto,” Mr Geatches said.

Mr Geatches said Perth Airport’s $750 million redevelopment remained on track, with the new domestic terminal 10 months into construction and due to open early next year, and expansion of the international terminal also commenced.