Project Northern Busway, Auckland
Stages 1B/1A & Esmonde Road Interchange, Stage 1C and Stage 2A Onewa Interchange
Contractor: Fletcher Construction - Engineering Division
08/2005– 12/2007
Value: NZ$230,000,000 (approx. €140.000.000)
This is the first project I got to work on after moving to New Zealand in June 2005. This dedicated bus facility is constructed on Auckland's North Shore, parallel to State Highway 1. The Busway is approximately 7,5 km long. To be able to build it, it was necessary to move and/or adjust a large number of stormwater drains, swales, utility services and sewers. Further to that a number of gullies needed to be filled and cuttings into the existing hillsides be made, with retaining structures to be put in place. This has been especially challenging working in the narrow corridor, alongside a busy motorway.
Once the stormwaters and utility services were out of the way, the project needed to create the necessary room to be able to build the actual Busway surfacing. This was accomplished by constructing several new retaining walls, viaducts and tunnels. Another very significant and integral part of the project scope was to incorporate 2 circuits of 3 ducts for high voltage power cables within the Busway's road foundations. These ducts are concreted into trenches that run the full length of the Busway. Also included in the project are 3 new bus stations. Akoranga Station (see picture below), Westlake Station (nowadays known as Smales Farm Station) and Sunnynook Station that provide the necessary nodes or hubs for patrons to travel to Auckland CBD or to gol anywhere on the North Shore they want by means of public transport.
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On this project I started off as a Project/Planning Engineer but that changed in January '07 when I got promoted to Engineering Manager. This effectively meant that while I remained responsible for the programming, I added on the role of Engineering Manager. It was my job to keep track of construction progress and monitor that against the master programme. Then signal any problems, adjust the programme or the construction priorities to the circumstances and keep everybody focussed and on track for Practical Completion on, or preferably before, the 17th of December 2007 (the contract end date for all Stage 1 works). Not in the least through my efforts keeping everybody on the straight and narrow, Fletcher Construction was able to apply for practical completion on the 16th of November 2007; a month early!
The programming role required a lot of information gathering, interaction with the site teams, attending to meetings, on-site checks and then application off all that information into the programme. As programming tool I used "Candy Programming", a software tool which in combination with an application simply called "Candy" (this is an estimating tool) also enabled me to keep track of our progress in terms of Earned Value and Cashflow predictions towards the end of the project. (for more info on this software tool refer to www.ccssa.com).
The Engineering Management part of my role on the project was to manage the process around Temporary Works (Temporary retaining walls, staging, falsework, formwork etc.) and to resolve any issues that came to light on the Issued For Construction (IFC) design. When the reconstruction of the Onewa Interchange ("Stage 2A) was added to the project, this engineering management role became the larger part of my day to day business. Onewa Interchange included the widening of 2 existing bridges, the construction of 3 new bridges, several retaining walls and the construction of an additional 2 km of Busway. Onewa Interchange was originally programmed to be completed in January 2009 but again the project team managed an early delivery and Practical Completion in October 2008.
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Owner |
Transit New Zealand / North Shore City Council / Transpower |
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Design |
Opus International Consultants BECA consultant Connell Wagner Consultants
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Construction |
Fletcher Construction Company - Engineering Division Brian Perry Civil |
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