Deloitte receives top design honours for space agency project
Professional services firm Deloitte has won top honours in the 2021 Australian Good Design Awards, receiving a ‘best-in-class’ gong in the design strategy category for its work on Australia’s first space mission control centre on behalf of the Australian Space Agency and Saber Astronautics.
For the past sixty years, Good Design Australia has honoured companies and organisations for excellence in design and innovation across a range of categories, seeking to promote the value of high-quality design and manufacturing. This year, under the overarching theme of ‘Design for a brighter future’, the organisation received a record number of submissions, the quality of which was described by organisers as “truly outstanding.”
Tasked by the Australian Space Agency to establish the Responsive Space Operations Centre (RSOC) in Adelaide – the nation’s first mission control centre – specialist space operations and services firm Saber Astronautics tapped Deloitte to aid it with go-to-market strategy, commercial and operations model, and customer and public facing experience strategy – an engagement which has earned Deloitte ‘best-in-class’ honours for design strategy.
As the RSOC was to be located within the multi-use Australian Space Discovery Centre (ASDC), which is publicly-accessible, the physical and experiential aspects of the design brief necessitated that Deloitte “ensure that the physical environment not only met with the operational requirements of Saber’s public/private business model, but also the expectations and needs of different audience groups including customers, suppliers, students and the general public.”
Overall, the jury believed Deloitte nailed the brief. “This application outlines how design can be successfully embedded into the strategy of a key element of the industry. Such a thorough approach to design strategy will underpin the future success of this Mission Control Centre. The centre will not only deliver sovereign capabilities in the fabrication, launching and operations of satellites but support missions including NASA’s planned Missions to Mars.”
Meanwhile, Deloitte also picked up a Best Design Award for interior work on its office in Melbourne, which was undertaken by the firm’s in-house team. For the large-scale project, Deloitte took a “living workplace” approach to maximise flexibility, with a range of large open spaces and quieter partitioned areas to allow for collaboration while still catering to individual working preferences – a necessity for such a multidisciplinary team of professionals.
“There is clarity of execution based on an intimate understanding of the needs of the client – a good outcome of an in-house design team,” the jury stated. “Deloitte are clear on using their space as a mechanism for leading service delivery experience, both for their customers and their staff. The space provides a multitude of working options for a large variety of employee engagement and collaboration needs. Their focus on positive human outcomes is apparent.”
Earlier this month, Deloitte’s internal HR team was named one of Australia’s leading teams in the field for the way the managed to help its employees through the Covid-19 pandemic as well as for a number of standout initiatives.
