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Merrin & Cranston - Our People

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Merrin and Cranston - Our People

It’s the diversity of people at Merrin & Cranston that characterises it’s architecture and project delivery. Leadership is provided by architects with extensive experience in the aged care arena, and across a wide variety of other projects. Director and CEO, Dwayne Nielsen, heads our leadership and management team supported by fellow directors, George Bellas (Business Development) and Laurie Ellis (Practice Manager). Our associates, Steven Hopper (Design) and Darren Jeffs (Contracts) complement our leadership team.

Our approach to management of projects is to appoint the appropriate personnel to each phase - design, documentation and construction - according to their individual strengths. With Dwayne Nielsen overseeing construction, George Bellas overseeing documentation and Laurie Ellis managing the day to day office activities, our policy is for fluid communication between each of the key personnel during all phases, formalised by project reviews at strategic intervals throughout the project process. In doing so each team member’s skills come together to complement our practice’s wisdom with new and energetic ideas and design approaches.

We sustain a relatively low staff turnover, with many employees being long term. This has allowed Merrin & Cranston to maintain a high level of corporate skill and knowledge, as well as a close-knit team, in providing a comprehensive architectural service from concept design right through to construction completion.

Collectively Dwayne Nielsen, George Bellas, Laurie Ellis and their staff have been involved with a wide variety of project types over many years, including aged care and retirement villages, low and high-rise office and residential buildings, community & civic buildings, churches, schools and child care centres, hospitals, retail and industrial projects. Delivery methods for the projects our staff have been involved with include traditional lump sum, design and construct, negotiated tender and construction management.

The type of project outcomes have also varied and our collective experience includes:

• delivery of new “greenfield” projects;
• extensions and refurbishment of existing buildings;
• complex staged developments including decanting of existing aged-care residents to new construction whilst maintaing operational facilities;
• fire and safety building upgrades whilst buildings maintain full operation;

CV’s of Dwayne Nielsen, George Bellas and Laurie Ellis are included below, which provide further detail.

Our Philosophy

Dwayne Nielsen, George Bellas and Laurie Ellis, pride themselves on the slogan “Merrin & Cranston - Architects who care enough to listen.”

Their core philosophy can be boiled down to 3 main pillars of leadership:

• Listening - to understand individual needs & requirements, available resources and expectations. Listening, not only to what’s said, but what is communicated in writing, by observation of existing facilities, and through understanding core operational systems and structures. Basically getting a complete understanding of each individual client. We also believe a key to good listening is also in asking relevant and sometimes hard questions, to flesh out ideas/concepts which may otherwise not necessarily be complete or potentially overlooked.

• Communicating - the process of ensuring that core requirements are effectively communicated to all parties/stakeholders in the process from concept to completion. This is facilitated by a communication system which includes briefing, masterplanning, concept planning, schedules, written documentation, and key stakeholder meetings and ongoing client feedback.

• Facilitating - this is achieved through taking what has been communicated and making it reality through processes during documentation & construction. We pride ourselves on complete and comprehensive documentation, and a sound understanding of construction, which we believe is essential to delivering good built outcomes. When we are performing the role of superintendent of a construction contract, we like to think we are hard but fair in our dealings with all parties engaged to deliver the final product.

Our Passion

Dwayne Nielsen, George Bellas and Laurie Ellis are passionate about what they do. Our mission is to deliver socially responsible architecture and interior design that translates our client’s aspirations into reality. We do this with an emphasis on valuing people, that is all stakeholders, throughout the process. Merrin & Cranston have undertaken a broad range of projects aligned with our mission.

We believe that through working closely with our clients, listening to fully understand their requirements, we can provide optimal solutions to meet individual circumstances. Whilst we have considerable experience and expertise gained over four decades of architectural practice, we remain passionate about delivering services that meet the needs of an ever-changing social and economic environment.

We have the required skills and understanding to work with our clients to facilitate a collaborative solution, which would enable their organisation to pursue its mission also. It is our view that our team at “M&C”, as we are affectionately known, have both the expertise and desire to see the vision of our clients become a reality.

Our Profile

Our company, Merrin & Cranston Pty Ltd, was established by Les Merrin and Don Cranston in Brisbane in 1970. Today, Dwayne Nielsen, George Bellas and Laurie Ellis continue on the Merrin and Cranston tradition.

The practice, now located in Dutton Park Brisbane, consists of staff with broad-ranging architectural experience and knowledge, including architects, interior designers, technicians, and a business manager.

Our medium sized architectural practice has developed considerable expertise particularly in residential aged care, retirement living, community and church projects in suburban and regional areas throughout Queensland and New South Wales.

We believe the size of our firm is small enough to offer our clients a personal service, yet large enough to creatively design, effectively document and competently administer during construction, projects ranging in scope and size from relatively small to multi-million dollar developments.

At Merrin & Cranston, we believe that clients not only benefit from our extensive experience, but also appreciate that we carefully listen to their vision and desires and work alongside them as a team, in making these visions and desires become a reality.

Our Service

Expertise as Principal Consultant has been built on many years of managing projects as Principal Consultant, and as a result the Merrin and Cranston Team have gained comprehensive experience and expertise in this field. As Principal Consultant, we have been responsible for direct consultation with the Client including internal Client teams / departments / stakeholders, and for direct management and coordination of secondary and/or sub-consultants. We make an exerted effort to review in detail consultant documentation with a focus on the production of comprehensive and coordinated contract documents across all disciplines.

Strategic Asset Portfolio Review and Portfolio Master Planning is an effective strategy in developing a way forward on individual and integrated aged care, retirement living and community health projects.

Before any of our clients with large building asset portfolios decide to commence any significant capital works program, we recommend that they establish a current status profile of their entire building stock/asset, across all of their sites. This along with appropriate demographic/market analysis and an understanding of their model of care, establishes a realistic foundation upon which informed decisions about the future of their sites and buildings can be made.

Strategic Asset Reviews consider a range of built environment aspects and can be tailored to suit specific reporting and profiling requirements. Profiling building assets across all sites, quickly highlights which sites and individual buildings require short, medium or long term attention. This information is an essential input to the strategic master planning for individual sites moving forward and proactively accommodating future demands.

Briefing is given a high priority as it helps us to understand our clients’ needs. A thorough briefing process is an essential first step in achieving client satisfaction with the final building project. Where clients are unsure of their specific aspects of their requirements, we can assist decision-making through the sharing of our experience across a range of projects.

We have worked with many different clients with various levels of hierarchy, and have an appreciation for a client’s “internal” departments and stakeholders, and how to effectively facilitate the establishment of the project Brief. This has included our engagement in establishing building design guidelines for our aged care clients.

Master Planning, Schematic and Developed Design paves the way at the outset of a successful project. We believe it is important to develop a master plan that captures the essential outcomes, realistically addressing the site constraints and maximising its potential. With a clear design brief in hand, our skilled design team establish a design specific solution for building and site layout that supports, facilitates and expresses the desired outcomes.

Contract Documentation, in our view, that is comprehensive minimises the risk of compromised quality, budget blow-outs due to variation claims throughout construction, and associated time delays. Tight documents are also the key to capturing the brief requirements and clearly communicating the required built environment outcomes to the contractor.

We pride ourselves in our comprehensive documentation, which we maintain as being of a very high quality in the industry. This is evidenced by consistent positive feedback from contractors during construction, including being engaged directly by a contractor to resolve design-related issues during construction, pertaining to another consultant team’s documents.

Construction Administration requires effective communication and attention to detail throughout the construction process in order to keep contractors focussed on a faithful implementation of the contract documents. Merrin & Cranston’s contract administration team have a reputation for being tough but fair in this regard with a view to maximising building quality and minimising long-term maintenance issues which arise out of poor workmanship or unsatisfactory substitution of specified materials and products.

Interior Design is provided from our in-house interior design staff, whose work is fully integrated with our architectural service for all built-in interiors elements included in the building contract. Our interior design service would include liaison with applicable staff to determine internal planning and fitout requirements, furniture layouts, lighting selections, materials and products, colour selections and presentation colour boards, included during the design, documentation, procurement and construction phases.

We can separately provide further interior design services for soft and loose furnishings including window coverings, furniture, decorator items, prints and artworks, not included in the building works. The provision of these FF&E services can be tailored to suit particular client requirements and procurement methods.

Ecologically Sustainable Design is achieved through the application of sound ESD principles to the design of each project within the context of capital and lifecycle budget constraints and legislative requirements. We are ever conscious of appropriate materials and finishes selections that provide maintenance-friendly solutions and we work together with the Client and project team to provide appropriate outcomes.
Quality Management systems are in place. These provide the framework within which our clients can be assured that processes are completed in a logical and ordered fashion and that critical events or processes are not overlooked. Programs and checklists are used to record milestones and facilitate Management Review throughout the design and documentation process. Director level oversight is given to each project within our practice.
Our Quality Management certification under ISO 9001 is provided by BSI.
We have Queensland Government PQC rating level 3 registration number 195A, and hold registration number 5946 on the Queensland Government Register of Quality Assured Suppliers.

Our Projects

As could be imagined, Merrin & Cranston have undertaken hundreds of projects over our 40 years of operation. In addition, individual staff members have been involved in many projects prior to joining M&C.

Our portfolio ranges from Residential Aged Care to industrial buildings. We have the capability of providing service from refurbishments and renovations to multi-storey green field developments. Whilst aged care continues to be a major strength of Merrin & Cranston, our expertise and experience is by no means limited.

Merrin & Cranston have facilitated a number of projects including:

• fully integrated retirement villages;
• new mulit-storey residential aged care buildings;
• independent living units;
• education & child care facilities;
• health projects;
• community centres and church developments;
• interior fitouts including commercial kitchen and laundry facilities;
• industrial developments;
• complex staged developments within operating facilities;
• renovations and refurbishments of existing buildings; and
• statutory fire compliance upgrades within operating facilities

Dwayne Nielsen

George Bellas

Laurie Ellis