By Ashley Karen
The tunnelling segments’ production has started for the 9km twin tunnels from Sydney Olympic Park to Westmead for the Sydney Metro West Project.
Over 60,000 concrete segments will be built at the Eastern Creek facility to line the tunnels, and 3,600 segments to line the spur tunnels, which will unite trains with the Stabling and Maintenance Facility in Clyde.
The segments will be kept at the facility until they are ready to be moved to the site and loaded onto the tunnel boring machine. As reported, each ring of the tunnel will include six segments.
The precast segments, each weighing about 3.8 tones, are made in high-precision laser-cut moulds that are designed and customized for the project.
Nearly 100 workers will be on-site at any time to work and maintain the facility which will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The first Tunnel Boring Machines for Sydney Metro West arrived at the Bays Station site in October last year. They are expected to begin work shortly, carving out 11km twin tunnels from The Bays to Sydney Olympic Park.
A JV between Acciona and Ferrovial is constructing the twin 11km tunnels for the central section of the Sydney Metro West Line. The Gamuda Australia and Laing O’Rourke Consortium have the Western Tunnelling contract to deliver 9km of twin metro rail tunnels between Sydney Olympic Park and Westmead.
In November, a JV of Ghella, John Holland and CPB Contractors received the Eastern Tunnelling Package – the third and final major tunnelling package which contains 3.5km of tunnels under Sydney Harbour.
The 24km Sydney Metro West will double rail capacity between Greater Parramatta and the Sydney CBD and is one of three projects developing Sydney Metro – Australia’s most prominent public transport project.
The Western Sydney Airport project is a 23km line via Western Sydney to the new Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport. CPB Contractors and Ghella JV will construct the new twin metro rail tunnels.
John Holland, CPB Contractors and Ghella JV won the 2022 Australian Construction Achievement Award for the tunnel and excavation works on the project.
Sydney will have a network of four metro lines, 46 stations and 113km of new metro rail when all three projects are finished.
