From October 2025 to October 2026, Outside Ideas delivered the civil and landscaping packages for Simmons Street Public Housing, a Homes Victoria development comprising 522 new affordable homes in South Yarra.
Working for Icon, our scope spanned the ground floor and podium levels. The package included streetscape works, roads and kerbs, footings, concrete pavements, driveways, edging and stairs, paving slabs, hard and soft landscaping, garden beds and rain gardens, podium planting, and soil blowing. We also delivered a design and construct irrigation solution across the development.
The public and communal spaces included a large playground with rubber softfall and communal vegetable planters. With the site surrounded by a small park, the popular Prahran Skatepark and the Chapel Street retail strip, the works required careful management of the surrounding public realm.
Access and staging across the ground floor and podium work zones changed throughout delivery, requiring our team to frequently resequence activities and coordinate closely with Icon and other subcontractors. Our in-house civil, concrete and landscaping capabilities enabled us to move into priority areas, support adjacent trades and complete the works to a very high standard.
Social procurement was a significant outcome of the project. We delivered just over 4,000 apprentice hours, exceeding our original target by a substantial margin. Simmons Street is one of six Homes Victoria social housing development delivered by Outside Ideas over the past five years.
