Good afternoon everyone,

Welcome to the first week of June – It’s hard to believe we are half way through 2022 already. We’ll be catching trains to Parkville before we know it.

A snapshot of works happening out on site next week is below – As per last week we’ll focus on the activities on surface and briefly touch on what is happening below the surface.

Anzac Station entrance construction – Tram Interchange

The timber canopy is coming together very nicely, if you look carefully you’ll see that in addition to the diagrid sections, we’ve also installed the first sections of the steel perimeter beam on both the eastern and western sides of the canopy. As the diagrid sections are progressively installed, these steel beams will be attached to the outer edge to make up the shape of the structure.. In addition to the perimeter beams – we’ll start installing cross laminated timber (CLT) panels on top of the diagrid sections. The first of these CLT panels will start to be installed next week.

I’ve mentioned in last few updates that there will be some sections of this work may need continue up until 10pm on some nights (It has also been in the monthly construction update). Up until now we have managed to avoid any work past 6pm, however the first of these extended works will commence next week with these CLT panels being installed up until 10pm.

Station box construction

On concourse level, the teams are progressively building the internal rooms for the station to operate. The southern end is the back of house that will service the operation of trains in the future. The northern section will house the future retail as well as the rooms for the Metro Trains staff and operation of the future station. The rooms at the southern end are well progressed and are being fitted out for their future use, while the rooms at the southern end are progressively coming together with blockwork ongoing.  On the platform level we continue to install the pre-cast sections of the future train platform as well as doing the concreting work to tie the tunnels into the station box. We’ve had these tie in works into the update for a while, so this week I thought I’d share a photo showing the before and after. As you can see by the formwork and bracing it is an incredibly intricate piece of work to tie the tunnel into the station box.  The emergency exit stairs for the station are also taking shape and have been progressively poured over the past few weeks.

Surface Works

While the surface works have been noisy of late, I’m pleased to report that they have made good progress. The team have slightly revised their sequencing and are now breaking out sections of the D-wall prior to doing the delayed pour strip, this is helping progress the works more swiftly.  Today we saw three NDD trucks (sucker trucks) working away on the surface. As I mentioned last week, we realise that these trucks are a particularly grating sound and we are trying to get this work done as quickly as possible. 

Right now we have just under 100m of exposed delayed pour strip that we need to clean out with the sucker trucks – we are achieving approximately 4m per day, per sucker truck. While it is certainly annoying to have three of them going at one time, we do achieve significantly greater productivity and all going well they’ll be finished the bulk of their existing task by the end of next week – whereas if we persisted with a single truck, we’d have them on site for another 25 days to work through the exposed area.

In response to feedback, we’ve pushed back the start time for the jackhammer demolition to 7:30am, as opposed to kicking off right at 7am as we had in the past – It’s a small respite but hopefully makes some difference, particularly on a Saturday. Due to the high noise of the sucker trucks, we’ll also hold them up until 7:30am on Saturday. We’ll start with two and then only add the other machine later in the morning. I appreciate that these are only small wins – but I hope it makes some difference. We genuinely appreciate everyone’s patience as we get through this disruptive work.

Monday 6/6	Tuesday 7/6	Wednesday 8/6	Thursday 9/6	Friday 10/6	Saturday 11/6
Stage 1 – Shrine access shaft FRP, waterproofing, winding down excavationStage 2 – Roof Slab completion worksStage 3 – BackfillStage 4 – Roof slab cleanout, d-wall demolition	Stage 1 – Shrine access shaft FRP, waterproofing, winding down excavationStage 2 – Roof Slab completion worksStage 3 – Tram Platform substructure works, service trenchingStage 4 – Roof slab cleanout, d-wall demolition	Stage 1 – Shrine access shaft FRP, waterproofing, winding down excavationStage 2 – Roof Slab completion worksStage 3 – Tram Platform substructure works, service trenchingStage 4 – Roof slab cleanout, d-wall demolition	Stage 1 – Shrine access shaft FRPStage 2 – Roof Slab completion worksStage 3 – Tram Platform substructure works, service trenchingStage 4 – Roof slab cleanout, d-wall demolition	Stage 1 – Shrine access shaft FRPStage 2 – Roof Slab completion worksStage 3 – Tram Platform substructure works, service trenchingStage 4 – Roof slab cleanout, d-wall demolition	Stage 1 – Shrine access shaft FRPStage 2 – Roof Slab completion worksStage 3 – Tram Platform substructure works, service trenchingStage 4 – Roof slab cleanout, d-wall demolition

Have a great weekend

Thanks

Rob