Lots happening underground this week and last

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Good afternoon everyone,

We are writing today with our weekly construction lookahead.

As you would be aware, Anzac Day is this Sunday, 25^th April. There will be no construction activities on site on Sunday, other than the minimum required to maintain safe operation of the one TBM still tunnelling towards Town Hall Station.  

The Anzac Station and Edmund Herring Oval site lights will be switched off ahead of the Dawn Service to help support the respectful observance of Anzac Day.

ANZAC STATION WEEKLY LOOK AHEAD

Tunnelling and TBM support site

TBM Alice has completed 1.5 kilometres of the 1.8 kilometre journey to the Town Hall Station. Currently, she is now underneath the Yarra River on the approach to Town Hall Station.

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.

The first rear gantry from TBM Mille will be pulled back through the tunnel to Anzac Station next week, over the coming weeks you’ll see sections of the TBM removed from the acoustic shed and stored to the side ahead of their removal from site via truck.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Tram Interchange

On Tuesday next week the team will pour the first section of the base slab for the tram interchange entrance. The section to be poured is the northern most section underneath the suspended slab. On the day two concrete pumps will be set up at the northern end with concrete trucks arriving to site throughout the day.

Waterproofing and steel fixing will continue in the remaining sections.

As we mentioned in last week’s look-ahead, steel fixing is one of the quieter activities as it is done largely by hand, in the coming weeks there may be some steel fixing carried out up until 10pm in the tram interchange. Any steel will be pre lowered into the box prior to 6pm to avoid unnecessary disruption. At this stage it’s unlikely any extended hour steel fixing will be required next week.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Shrine of Remembrance

Backfilling work is nearly complete at the Shrine Entrance, once this is done the area will be sealed ahead of the storage of the first gantry piece that will be stored on top. The first rear gantry is likely to be lifted up to surface at the back end of next week and stored. The completion of backfilling means that stage one of the Shrine entrance is now complete.

Station box construction

In the southern section of the station box we have this week removed the false work deck that we used to support the concourse level pour. The removal of the false work means that there is the room underneath the concourse to commence the second stage of excavation of the sacrificial tunnel. This will take the south box down to the base slab level.

The start of this excavation will also see the return of load-out works, with a long-reach excavators loading trucks that will drive from site. As was the case last time, the load out of excavated material will continue up until 10pm on nights. As with the underground excavation, the lessons learned from last time will be applied – with all light towers running off mains power and the excavator operators barred from using the bucket on concrete to scrape up loose material.  Loadout from 6pm to 10pm will only be of softer materials with no load-out of concrete segments into truck beds.

As we mentioned last week, we will trial 24/7 excavation underground. Excavators will running under the concrete decks after 10pm and will closely monitor the noise during this time. A member of the environment team will be out on site conducting monitoring on the first night of works.

This week we’ve included a photo looking south down the station box across the newly poured concourse level. With the falsework deck removed from underneath concourse, you can see the team clearing out the area and running lighting in preparation for the start of excavation down to the base slab level (roughly an additional 2m), while up on the concourse level the team are preparing for the construction of the internal walls on what will be the ‘back of house’ concourse area of Anzac Station.

The second photo shows the remaining section of the sacrificial tunnel that we will begin excavating next week.

Over in the northern end of the station box underneath the acoustic shed, the team have now poured two sections of the concourse slab in the north and will next week pour the third section, in addition to continuing the work on the internal columns.

Thanks, Rob and Jordan