Good afternoon everyone,

We hope you’ve been having a lovely week.

We are writing today with our next weekly construction lookahead.

ANZAC STATION WEEKLY LOOK AHEAD

Tunnelling and TBM support site

TBM Millie has now passed the deepest part of her journey to the CBD and is beginning to rise as she nears the Yarra River and Town Hall Station, TBM Alice is also making good progress underneath St Kilda Road, she is currently at Coventry Street just approaching the Victoria Barracks. In total TBM Millie has completed 1.1 kilometres of tunnel, with TBM Alice having now completed over 450 metres.

The slurry treatment plant at Edmund Herring Oval continues to operate, treating the spoil coming from TBMs Millie and Alice. Trucks for spoil disposal will continue for the duration of tunnelling in the East.  

Station box construction

This week, the team continued the demolition of sacrificial tunnel and excavation to base slab level in the south box, with the load out of soil taking place up until 10pm on weeknights.  Works have also been continuing under the roof slab overnight, as the team excavates and stockpiles larger materials for removal the next day.

In some good news, the 10pm loadout is now complete, which will mean fewer trucks in the south box area after hours. Crews will continue working overnight under the roof slab.

A couple of weeks ago, we included a picture looking south towards the sacrificial tunnels and excavation in our update. We’ve included another picture of this area of works today, facing north. This section of sacrificial tunnel sits between the north and south box. If you look closely in the left tunnel, you will actually see the noise curtain that separates the north and south box work areas. If that curtain were removed, you’d have a clear line of site into the northern station box.

Next week, in addition to the continued tunnel demolition and excavation, you will see steel deliveries returning to the area as crews prepare install falsework and steelfixing for the next concourse concrete slab pours.

Underneath the acoustic shed in the north box, the site has been split into two parts. On one end of the box, concrete TBM segments and pipes are fed down below to keep Millie and Alice moving forward towards the CBD. At the other end of the box, the team are busy demolishing the old TBM launching platform in preparation for the construction of the concourse slab within the north box.

A littler further down the track, and once the concourse slab is cast, the team will then begin removing the large red struts from within the north box site, as the newly constructed concourse slab will act as the internal support for the station box walls.

From now on, we will provide the south box excavation updates and north box updates together, under the heading ‘Station box construction’.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Tram Interchange

With the bulk excavation of the tram interchange now complete, the team will now commence the detailed digging for hydraulic pipes and slab folds.

The team continues to install piles in the base of the excavation which will be tied into the future concrete base slab. 11 out of 20 of these piles are now completed, with the remaining 9 expected to be complete by Thursday next week. As the piles are installed, they will be required to be trimmed back to the correct height, which means periods of hammering and high level noise. Concrete pours are required to construct the piles, and as we always mention, to ensure structural stability, concrete pours must be continuous, so in some cases may need to extend past 6pm. We will aim to wrap these activities up as early as we can.

Later next week, the team will begin installing waterproofing membrane underneath the roof slab.

On Thursday, there will be some increased activity in the tram interchange area after our normal construction hours, as the team have to remove the piling rig from site. Work to decommission the rig will commence during the day, but will run up until 10pm. This is expected to generate low levels of noise, and crews will be reminded of their responsibilities on site with regards to lighting and excess noise.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Shrine of Remembrance

The concrete pour for the first section of the Shrine of Remembrance roof slab that we mentioned in last week’s email has been pushed from today, back to Monday 1 March. The method of construction will be the same.

As it is such a large concrete pour, works will run outsite our normal construction hours. The last concrete delivery will be to site prior to 6pm, however finishing works will still be required after that, which will include the use of hand tools and helicopter fans. Additionally, the site will need to be lit during these works. At this stage, these works will run past midnight, however going on past experience from pours that have continued out of normal construction hours, we don’t anticipate the finishing works will be noisy.

St Kilda Road – Southbound linemarking removal

As part of a routine road safety audit, we have been asked to alter a short stretch of the bike lane on St Kilda Road adjacent to our new site gate.

This will involve using a high-pressure water hose to removing a section of redundant road markings to remove them from the area.

These works could ether be done overnight mid-week or on a Sunday evening, both times when traffic is reduced. We’ve opted to carry out the work be carried out on Sunday evening so it does not impact residents overnight.

The work will only take 30 minutes, and is scheduled to be completed between 6.30 and 7.00pm this Sunday 28 February.

St Kilda Road will remain open to traffic for the duration of the works, with vehicles managed through the area by traffic controllers.

We apologise for the inconvenience, and the short notice.

Thanks,

Rob and Jordan