Good afternoon everyone – hope everyone enjoyed the first day of Spring,

Below is a snapshot of the works ahead. You’ll notice that today we’ve got a different map to the one you’d be used to seeing in the construction notifications and in this update.

This is due to a few changes to the area in September:

• The works on St Kilda Road between Park Street and Dorcas Street are now complete. There is some minor asphalt rectification works near Dorcas Street coming up, but you’ll see that the concrete barriers are gone and the turf is in along this section.
• Next week we plan to reopen the legacy arrangement for Albert Road, including the left turn from St Kilda Road to Albert Road (more on this below)
• Later in September we’ll reopen the right turn from Park Street onto St Kilda Road (we’ll confirm the timing in future editions, but for now we’ve shown it on the map as upcoming)

And just a reminder that next Monday is an RDO, so no works on site that day.

1. Albert Road legacy construction (Major Works)

It’s been a wet week, which is incredibly frustrating at the best of times, but especially when we’ve closed Albert Road with a jam packed and targeted program to rebuild it entirely. The weather has significantly slowed our progress here and eaten into every ounce of contingency. As we stand right now, the reopening date for the road is Friday 8^th of September (next Friday)

Today and tomorrow we’ll be laying crushed rock and putting in the last of the kerbs and traffic islands, then next week we’ve got the asphalting crews booked in for Wednesday and Thursday, then on Thursday afternoon/evening, we’ll be moving the concrete barriers and fencing, and line-mark the road overnight. On Friday morning the road should re-open. Here’s hoping for some drier weather next week.

In some good news, there is new parking that will come online next week adjacent to Albert Reserve.  I should point out that in the actual legacy design has this parking allocated as a taxi drop off zone for the operational Anzac station. After some quick conversations with City of Port Phillip we’ve agreed that the best course of action is to allocate these parks as short term 1h parking while the construction is still underway and I understand it will remain as such until the opening of the station.

Thanks to everyone for their patience while the works have been underway.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station Entrance

Nothing out of the ordinary at Albert Road Reserve station entrance, the formwork and pouring of walls continues at good pace.

3. Station Fitout

Underground the teams are making their way from south to north on the new station platform laying the flooring down on the platform level. Elsewhere, the focus remains on fitting out the back of house rooms. Last week the team hit a big, but largely invisible milestone when they successfully energised the first of the high voltage substations inside the station, effectively commencing the full energisation process for Anzac Station.

From here the team will start to energise our HV A and B Supply and then move onto our main station switch boards over the coming weeks.

4. Shrine Entrance

Another big milestone this week with the completion of the stairs leading up from the concourse level to the edge of the Shrine of Remembrance and Domain Road.  It may be hard to associate that side of the job with Domain Road as it’s been closed off for so long – but the legacy design reinstates the Domain Road connection to St Kilda Road and these stairs sit just adjacent to the reinstated roadway and tram line. This week we’ve included before and after photos of the completed stairs.

5. St Kilda Road – Bowen Lane to Bowen Crescent

Moving down south along the job and we are continuing to plug away in front of Bowen Lane, this area has been an absolute slog with the amount of services in the area, but we are slowly getting to where we need to be. With the water now installed we’ll be able to move onto the installation of the other services in this section. Once we’re out of the ground and away from the tangled mess below the surface, this section of the job will move along at a much better pace. We’ll move onto the construction of the roadway, kerb and landscaping through this section. 

Drainage installation will be the focus of next week, starting on n the north side of Bowen Lane with a pedestrian diversion in place as we make our way south, as the drainage progresses forward, the new gas line alignment will follow behind it. Based on the current progress, we’ve had to revise the reopening date for Bowen Lane to the 16 September.

6. St Kilda Road Bowen Crescent to Toorak Road

Northbound Side (Towards City)

Works at the southern end of site are a tale of two halves, the citybound side of the job is progressing very well and the drainage installation team are making their way along the road nicely installing the new drainage pipes, by the back end of next week they should be done with their drainage installation and will start building the kerbing and new separated bike lanes. We’ll then do some basic asphalting and by second half of September we should largely be done with our civil works in this spot.

We will come back and do the final layer of asphalting, but we only do that once we’ve got the entire area finished and ready for what is known as the final ‘wearing course’ of asphalt. We’d expect this in late September, early October.

Southbound side (Away from City)

Across the other side of the road the story is not so rosy, we’ve encountered a gas connection that is sitting flush where our drainage pipes are supposed to run through. This section of road has thrown curve balls since we put an excavator in there. When the team opened up the road and started excavating they found a completely unexplained concrete slab sitting just underneath the road, which had to be broken out – just one of the challenges of opening up one of Melbourne’s oldest roads. 

The gas clash means we’ll also need to end our drainage run at a new pit, so today and tomorrow we’ve got crews working close to the corner of Toorak Road excavating and sucker trucks in place to locate the new end-pit.

Next Tuesday we’ll be excavating the remaining section of road between the pedestrian crossing and the little laneway. Same equipment, excavators and sucker trucks.

Later in the week we will also need to close the pedestrian crossing for a short period to complete the investigation work (the crossing point detour will be up at Toorak Road)

This entire exercise is essentially to ensure that there are no other surprises waiting for us underground in these locations, we’ll find out what’s down there, patch it back up and reopen the laneway and pedestrian crossing. We then revise the designs accordingly, and in all likelihood, the gas utility company will adjust the height of their gas connection to make room for our revised drainage design.

We then install our drainage run in and build the kerb and bike lanes and asphalt (as per the city-bound side).

Despite this rigmarole, we’re still targeting being done with our civil works here by the end of the month.

Early Look Ahead : Upcoming Nightworks Bundle

While it’s not next week, we wanted to put in an early look-ahead to some night works that we’ve got coming up.

This is what you could describe as a bundling of works that need to happen overnight with an overnight St Kilda road closure in place. Rather than schedule them separately with multiple weeks of night works – we’ve bundled them together to reduce the overall amount of nights that we are working.

The current schedule is for these works to take place from the 12^th to the 15^th September.

Currently in the bundle is:

• Park St Intersection completion & reopening of the right turn out of Park St
  • Profiling asphalt and laying final section of asphalt
  • Traffic light/lighting installation
  • Connecting in the new traffic lights
• Line-marking to enable the right turn lane out of Park St
• Installation of CitiPower power and irrigation lines under St Kilda road near Albert Road. (Trenching and installation)
• Laying turf in the traffic islands opposite the Hallmark building (While it seems odd to lay turf at night, but its too close to the tram tracks and road to do it safely during the day)
• Scaling back the hoarding that is currently on the tram platform to provide additional space for passengers.

We’re still finalising this scope and we’ll have more information on these works in next weeks notification, along with a map to mark out the locations.

Have a great weekend – and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads,

Thanks, Rob and Remy