Good afternoon everyone – Isn’t spring weather wonderful.

After two weeks of having the critical Albert Road works regularly rained on, we won’t dwell on the topic.

Apologies for a very short update this week – The race to get Albert Road reopened has occupied a large portion of our time today.

Onto next week’s work.

1. Albert Road legacy construction

Suffice to say we didn’t get as much done in our two week blitz as we would have liked.

The Friday rain thwarted most of our attempts to complete the final bike lane asphalting and reopen the road entirely. We today prioritised the asphalting of the driveway connections back into buildings and we will have to come back next week to complete the bike lane asphalting (the asphalt batching plant is not open tomorrow so we cant get a supply of asphalt tomorrow to finish the job)

What this means is that the road has now reopened in a temporary fashion to allow residents to enter driveways. It will remain as a one-way arrangement with the exit from Albert Road onto St Kilda road reopened – however the left turn from St Kilda Road into Albert Road has not.  

Next week is a bit up in the air as we have to re-plan the works around an open road – but we will likely have asphalting crews working on Albert Road next week – and we should have enough room to keep local traffic moving during this time and not close driveways.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station Entrance

We managed to get another major pour completed mid-week within the station box entrance and today we lifted in a series of pre-cast concrete elements for the station box.Not too much to report from down in the station box.

3. Station Fitout

Once again, the update is more of the same down on the platform level, with the tiling going  on at the platform level and installing some of the operational elements for the future station.

4. Shrine Entrance

In the Shrine entrance the focus remains the forming and pouring of stair cases. In this area there are two separate sets of stairs, one set for the emergency egress, and the other the public staircase adjacent to the future escalators.

5. St Kilda Road – Bowen Lane to Bowen Crescent

The pedestrian detour through site is in action and as per last weeks update, the drainage run will progresses forward, the new gas line alignment will follow behind it.

6. St Kilda Road Bowen Crescent to Toorak Road

Northbound Side (Towards City)

The drainage run is almost finished, but the same weather that hampered the Albert Road site has slowed progress here. 

Southbound side (Away from City)

As per last week’s update, the final investigation works are continuing in front of the Royce Hotel to give us the full picture of the underground conditions.
All going well we should be able to finally start installing drainage, beginning in front of the Royce and moving towards Toorak Road. This is the opposite direction than we’d normally like to work the connection, but we’ll start up this end to keep things moving along while we lower the gas connection that I mentioned last week.

Upcoming Nightworks Bundle

I mentioned in last weeks update our 3 Night bundle of nightworks  (12-15 September)

I’ve attached the works notice again as a reminder – I thought today I’d give a rough breakdown of which nights these works will take place (This is subject to change – but it is our current plan)

Tuesday Night into Wednesday Morning

• Crews will be using hand tools to remove sections of the hoarding on the tram platform and at the kiosk. We will also need to take the removed panels off the platform using forklifts
• The first of the excavation across St Kilda Road will commence at the pedestrian crossing near the Royce Hotel. The noisiest parts will be at the start of the works with the use of road saws to cut open the road and excavators to remove the asphalt. The conduits are not particularly deep and the team expects to have them installed and backfilled on the one night
• We’ve got four pit lids next to the chiller plants that we need to remove – We need a mobile crane to do this and it needs to be on the tram tracks to get in position.

Wednesday night into Thursday Morning

• On Wednesday night the team will be using the asphalt profiler to remove a layer of asphalt at Park Street and St Kilda Road, and a section up near Dorcas Street.
• The second and third excavated crossings of St Kilda Road will take place on Wednesday night north of the oculus across to Albert Road – Similarly the noisiest parts will be at the start of the works with the use of road saws to cut open the road and excavators to remove the asphalt – and it should be complete in one night

Thursday night into Friday Morning

• Thursday night we’ll be laying the final layers of asphalt at Dorcas Street, and at the St Kilda Road/Park Street intersection. We’ll also go back to each of the crossing points and patch up the areas of the road we excavated with finished asphalt
• We’ll also be standing poles at the various locations across the site.

Have a great weekend

Thanks, Rob and Remy