General Motors’ Australian operation Holden has moved from “art deco to state-of-the-art” with the opening of a new headquarters building in Port Melbourne, in its home state of Victoria.
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More than 1,500 employees will be consolidated under one roof for the first time since the automaker’s heritage-listed headquarters were built beside the new site in the 1930s.
The building construction was part of a $A200 million redevelopment of the Fishermans Bend business precinct. The building is leased back from the developer as part of a long-term lease arrangement.
Speaking at the official opening on Wednesday, Holden chairman and managing director Denny Mooney said: “[The building] creates greater opportunity for Holden teams to work more collaboratively and openly and comes on top of our own $A2 billion, five-year investment programme for Australia by 2006.
“The Saab team will also move [in] bringing GM brands together for the first time. The brands continue to operate separately from the customer’s perspective while achieving significant savings by sharing back office and administrative functions.”
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By GlobalDataTo coincide with the move, Holden announced a change of its company name to GM Holden Ltd, restoring the reference to parent company General Motors which had been part of the Australian name for all but nine years of its ownership of Holden since 1931.
The development provides 20,400 square metres of office space inside a three storey building which includes two full-height atrium spaces and links to a new multi-storey car park.
The project represented the largest building works programme for Holden’s corporate headquarters since its original art deco buildings were built.
Features include a voice-over-IP telephony system which enables all communications to be transferred to any workstation without the need for technicians; flat screen monitors on arms for desktop computer users with under desk slings for hard drives to free up desk space; an online centralised booking system to access more than 60 meeting rooms; and online fax facilities and multifunction devices which can photocopy, fax, scan and print.
The building also introduces new environment-friendly features including a rain water landscape irrigation system which uses water from the car park roof to reduce consumption; programmed lighting system which senses the levels of external light and automatically adjusts internal light levels to compensate; and roof-mounted solar panels which provide the building with hot water.
Employees have begun moving into the building with the final teams scheduled to relocate in early July. It is adjacent to the automaker’s technical centre, which will continue to be used by design and other departments.
The new headquarters is the latest long-term commitment by General Motors to Australia. A $A400 million ‘Global V6’ engine plant began production for domestic and export markets at Port Melbourne in 2003 and Holden is currently spending $450 million upgrading its vehicle manufacturing facility in Elizabeth, South Australia.
Elizabeth is the source of a number of Chevrolet-badged Holden models shipped to the Middle East, South America and South Africa.
