But then this was not an ordinary project for Tony McBurney from local company Integrated Design Group.

"We worked on that project for six days in Uganda and in that time we designed a school twice the size of All Saints'," he says.

It made for a busy period.

"It's pretty intense work, but very rewarding - and challenging in interesting ways.”

Nick Oldham from Integrated Design Group's North Strathfield office accompanied Mr McBurney on this occasion.

Mr McBurney's short, intense trip to Uganda in April was the latest chapter in his more than 10-year association with the east African nation, which has been ravaged by the AIDS virus.

The Integrated Design director's brief was simple: to come up with a design for a high school for the Cherish Uganda charity, which cares for children living with HIV in the nation.

Cherish Uganda has a primary school, opened in February 2011, but its students are now going into secondary school, and the aim is to provide a facility for their continuing education.

"It will look after their physical needs, provide for their education and also provide for their spiritual needs," Mr McBurney says.

The boarding school, for up to 1000 children, is planned for Rakai, in the country's south-west, close to Tanzania. 

More than a school, it will provide housing for its students and health care for them and the community in which it is built.

Mr McBurney took part of his briefing for the project from the children themselves, who explained what they would like in their school and what - including security and identity - they would like it to provide them.

"You have to listen very carefully and understand what is being asked for," he says.

There was travel to the site, to get a feel for the landscape and the climate, among other factors, and at the end of the six days there was a full presentation of the design.

The high school has been designed using the "kit of parts" architectural philosophy, emphasising ease of assembly through the repetition and reinterpretation of elements.

The school has been based on a structural grid and is designed to be built using materials and skills available in Uganda.

Mr McBurney says Cherish Uganda's work is vital because the country was "the epicentre of the AIDS crisis".

Where much of the western world has moved on, he says, declaring that the crisis is over, many children living with AIDS in Uganda still face a death sentence.

"Kids in their situation are not valued. Impoverished people struggle to invest scarce money in their future. But Cherish is doing that."

While in Uganda in April, Mr McBurney visited another school he has designed, which is due to open soon.

Mr McBurney says people may be familiar with the bestseller Kisses From Katie, which tells the story of a young woman who moved to Uganda and established work to support destitute children within their families in the town of Jinja at the head of the Nile.

The organisation Katie Davis founded is establishing the Amazima Secondary School so students can receive progressive education near their home community.

"It was certainly rewarding to see the dream becoming a reality just two years after our 2014 trip,” he says.

The school was designed under similar circumstances to this recent visit. 

"On that occasion it felt a genuinely international effort with a team of a dozen specialists from seven different nationalities combining their skills," he says.

That school, like Cherish High School, was designed by Mr McBurney through Integrated Design's ongoing relationship with Engineering Ministries International (EMI).

The non-profit Christian development organisation says it is "made up of architects, engineers and design professionals who donate their skills to help children and families around the world step out of poverty and into a world of hope".

Cherish Uganda is raising capital and recurrent funding for the Cherish High School project and Mr McBurney says the charity hopes to move into detailed drawings in the first part of next year and construction itself in the middle of next year.

And would he like to go back to see the finished school?

"I certainly would enjoy that privilege," he says.

In the meantime, John Sauder, who is the head of EMI's office in the Ugandan capital Kampala, will spend three months of his six-month sabbatical in the Integrated Design office in Bathurst.

"It's a very interesting time of an international flow of ideas," Mr McBurney says.

Integrated Design, with EMI, has been nominated for the Vision Award in the Australian Institute of Architects' NSW Country Division Awards for Cherish High School.