Capital project funding advisory for Australian public university

The university had developed a transformational multi-year infrastructure development program comprising more than $2.0 billion of projects. The projects’ scale and complexity, coupled with potential timing constraints, were beyond the university’s traditional debt funding and internal resourcing model, requiring a more innovative capital and delivery strategy.

The key objectives of the engagement were for our team to: 

• support planning and decision-making
• advise the university on alternative project funding options
• identify prospective capital and delivery partners and identify parties with the capacity to participate in the proposed program.

How we helped

We assembled a cross-functional team with higher education experience to bring a combined real estate, capital and performance improvement perspective to the engagement. Our approach was to embed with the university’s infrastructure team and engage with our broad network of real estate and infrastructure investor-developers.

Outcomes 

• Provided comprehensive strategic advice, culminating in a formal strategy paper, to support the university’s campus and property planning and decision-making.
• The strategy paper addressed:
  • the current state of the university’s property portfolio
  • alignment with the university’s strategic plan.
  • key real estate activation projects identified
  • types and suitability of funding options for projects, including a succinct ‘menu’ of different options and their suitability to the university’s purposes
  • state of the capital market and appetite for university sector real estate and infrastructure assets
  • market feedback from leading institutional real asset investors and developers
  • case studies detailing comparable university capital works programs across Australia and internationally
  • go forward approach, including timeframes, transaction strategies, stakeholder engagement considerations and risk management.
  • additional opportunities to release value within university assets.