Good afternoon everyone,

Welcome to this week’s update, live from the current centre of the F1 universe. There is also plenty happening on site, albeit not moving quite as quickly as the machinery over at Albert Park.

As forecast in last weeks look-ahead, we did get a bit of weather this week, so it has dented progress a little.

1. Station Roof Works

Next week we’ll continue with the steel tying to connect the roof into the diaphragm walls – the corner section is proving a little trickier than first expected, so the concrete pour isn’t on the agenda for next week. The start of works for the section in front of Botanica is still locked in place for the 13 April.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station entrance

Wet weather has thwarted our plans to pour concrete this week – we’ll have trucks and pumps out to site on Monday to pour the capping beams. Meanwhile the excavation has moved along in between showers, we’re now roughly a quarter of the way through the main excavation of the entrance itself. Other than some freshly poured concrete, there won’t be any new scenery next week, with excavation ongoing.

3. Conduit Connection – Albert Road

We understand that almost all the conduit connections are in place and it is over to the energy provider to cut over the power to the tram stop. There will be a days work to connect the power to the tram stop, at this time the pedestrian lights to cross St Kilda Road to the tram stop will be out of action, but we’ll have traffic controllers in place to get people across safely while the connection works are underway. Just waiting for confirmation from the provider about when this can occur.

4. Albert Road North Construction

Similarly in Albert Road, it’s drainage works in the central island section, we’ve installed some of the culverts through here and backfilled. Next week we’ll continue with sections of drainage and also start underground electrical connections within the Albert Reserve section (up closer towards St Kilda Road)

5. St Kilda Road median works – South

The base slab has been poured for the first of the chiller plant structures (the northern structure) In what is a recurring theme across site, we should have some concrete trucks arriving late next week or early the following week to pour the concrete base for the second chiller plant structure. The structural steel and precast work commences in April.

The shifting of traffic barriers on the southbound lane of St Kilda Road between Bromby Street and Toorak Road will take place just after Easter. This will require mobile cranes on the road shifting barriers, so will need a short term closure of St Kilda Road southbound. We’ll do this overnight to minimise disruption to traffic. We’re targeting an evening on or just after the 13 April at this point, but I will confirm once we’ve got the relevant approvals in place.

Once again, a reminder that this will result in the permanent removal of the St Kilda Road parking, southbound between Bromby Street and Toorak Road.

6. St Kilda Road median works – North – Nightworks this evening

The biggest impact from the rain this week is that we couldn’t get the asphalt down at the intersection of Park Street and St Kilda Road last night. Tonight was contingency night for line-marking, but we’re going to get into this section tonight and finish this asphalting work that we couldn’t get done last night. Once again, kicking the works off once trams stop operating, which on Friday night is a smaller window between 1am and 5am.

We did however push on through the weather and re-open the left turn from St Kilda Road into Park Street on Thursday night – as well as reopening the pedestrian crossing. A welcome change for everyone, I’m sure.

We do now have some brand new asphalt in the centre carriageway of St Kilda Road between Park Street and Dorcas Street.  As I’ve mentioned previously, we’ll soon shift traffic into the central carriageway in both southbound and northbound directions and temporarily remove the parking on the western side of St Kilda Road. Like the barrier shift in the southern end of site – this will require an overnight shut of St Kilda Road to execute the change.

To minimise the number of closures and overnight works – we’re going to combine these two activities into one night of work. As mentioned above, we’re targeting an evening either on or just after the 13^th April.

7. Station box construction

It has been a while since I’ve included a photo of works from around site, so today I’ve included a snap from underground that shows the main stairs down to the platform level. The yellow drum lighting will feature across the stations, as will the architectural baffles, these orange baffles help to reduce the noise within the actual stations. You can also see the station escalators, this is one of two sets of escalators for the new station, works are currently underway to commission these escalators – as well as the escalators linking the tram stop to the concourse.

8. Shrine Entrance

The Shrine Entrance has now completed the excavation down to the base slab and we’ll start building back up with the base slab and internal walls. The team are pleased to see the end of the excavation and break back, as this was a very small and fiddly site that was a challenge to work within. The entrance build out will kick off next week, involving concreting a blinding layer before steel fixing for the base slab.

9. Park Street to Albert Road

If you walk between Park Street and Albert Road now, you’ll see that we’ve put in place the detour onto the separated bike lane which will act as a temporary footpath when we close the footpath in front of Hallmark. We should get in and start breaking out the footpath tomorrow.

Have a wonderful weekend

Thanks, Rob