Good afternoon everyone,

We hope you’ve been having a great week.

We are writing today with our next weekly construction lookahead.

ANZAC STATION WEEKLY LOOK AHEAD

Please be aware that Monday is an RDO. Tunnelling support related activities will continue both underground and at EHO, but there will be no other civil works on these days.

Tunnelling and TBM support site

In exciting news, and a major milestone for the project, TBM Alice broke through at Town Hall Station earlier this week! We’ve included a picture of the breakthrough to this email for you.

She now joins TBM Millie, having completed their 1.8 kilometre journeys to the CBD, underneath St Kilda Road, Queen Victoria Gardens, the Yarra River and Flinders Street Station. This means that tunnelling in the East is now complete.

From here, work will continue stripping pipes from the completed tunnels and then disassembling the TBMs and returning the gantry pieces to the Anzac Station site.

The slurry treatment plant at Edmund Herring Oval will now be thoroughly cleaned, before work begins to dismantle and remove all of the equipment. This will take a couple of months, and then the area will be used for equipment laydown and storage.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Tram Interchange

Similar works continue in the tram interchange next week.

Waterproofing and steelfixing are ongoing to prepare for the next concrete pour to construct the base slab. Works are also continuing on preparing the area for the construction of some of the internal walls and columns.

At the moment, the next base slab concrete pour is scheduled for Thursday 13 May. As we’ve mentioned in the past, to ensure structural integrity of any concrete pour, works must be continuous and may be required to continue outside of normal construction hours.

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. Where possible, steel will be lowered into the box earlier in the shift 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

The Shrine of Remembrance station entrance site has been backfilled and asphalted. It has now been handed over to the tunnelling team who will use it to store TBM parts as they are returned to site before they’re taken away by the supplier. As no works will be occurring in this area for a while, we will not be including it in lookaheads moving forward.

Station box construction

In the southern section of the station box, work continues to excavate down to the base slab level, which includes the demolition and removal of the sacrificial tunnel.

Excavation will continue to operate underneath the roof slab 24/7. While excavators will continue underground after 10pm, surface works of loading trucks with material to remove from site will stop at 10pm.  

This second stage of excavation was originally due to be completed by the end of the month, but the team is progressing very well and it is looking likely that we will be finished before then. We will keep you updated through these emails.

We’ve included a photo this week of how far along the excavation has progressed. Last week’s photo showed the start of the works, this week’s photo is from the same position, highlighting how far the works have progressed as the team head south breaking out the sacrificial tunnels and excavating down to the base slab.

Our environment team will continue to monitor these works closely, with supervisors on site working to ensure noise is minimised where possible.

In addition to the sacrificial tunnel demolition and excavation, work has begun on formwork to construct some of the permanent columns and walls on the concourse level of the south box.

Over in the northern end of the station box underneath the acoustic shed, the team continues to construct internal columns, and install falsework and steelfixing for the next concourse slab pour. The next column is due to be poured next Tuesday 11 May.

Thanks,

Rob and Jordan