As reported by our Co-Presidents, we had an awesome turnout for our joint meet with RC Auckland Harbourside last week with 19 of our members Zooming in and including three partners, our actual attendance was a very healthy 22.
The guest speaker was Brice Gaudin who is coordinating with all the Link Alliance partners to plan, manage and coordinate the BIM process for the delivery of the City Rail Link which is now well underway (in fact mostly underground) in Auckland City.Brice had a hugely informative presentation complete with digital imagery and to tell us about the four stations they are working on: Britomart (redevelopment), Aotea Station (new), Karangahape (new) and Mt Eden (redevelopment).
Britomart is expected to be NZ’s busiest station and will have a lot of services to divert. This re-development of Britomart has taken place some 18-25 meters below ground level and this part of the station will be around 400 meters long.
Aotea Station is completely new and is 11 meters below ground. Karangahape Station is also completely new and has two shafts (Pitt Street and Mercury Lane). Mt Eden Station is being developed and is complicated due to ongoing operations on the Western Line, a lot of tunnelling activities etc.The whole project is due for completion in 2024 and started in July 2019.
Brice then took some time to explain the BIM process (Building Information Modelling) and showed us how it goes beyond the planning and design phase and includes: cost management, construction management, project management and facility operation.
He spoke about how technology is transforming industrial production and advised they use Microsoft SharePoint to track EVERYTHING. He then showed us a sample of their SharePoint 'Dashboard' and it was easy to get a sense of how every piece of information relating this huge project is logged, tracked and any issues resolved. He explained how there is a Digital Totem at each of their sites – which is an access point complete with computers, internet, and Wi-Fi for workers to source all of their information easily.
He also showed us a sample of the virtual reality environment that has been developed to assist with training for workers and saves time and money e.g. they can conduct ‘virtual’ safety inductions for the tunnel boring machine; or run ‘virtual’ Fire Evacuation trials. It was an information packed presentation which certainly provided a better understanding of how huge this project is; and gave us a virtual peek at how this will transform the City Rail Link in the very near future.
