GET Grant Program to fund technologies that strengthen Australia’s electricity grid
Aurecon is the technical advisor for the Australian Government's $30 million GET Grant Program, funding 14 projects to enhance energy grid resilience.
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Peninsula Link, opened last week in Melbourne, was the first road to be delivered in Australia under the availability PPP model, more commonly used for the delivery of social infrastructure.
Administered by the Linking Melbourne Authority, which engaged project company, SouthernWay, the freeway was designed and built by Abigroup, with an Aurecon-SKM joint venture providing the principal design services. Lend Lease’s Infrastructure Services business will operate and maintain the project over a 25 year period.
The 27 kilometre Peninsula Link is the Mornington Peninsula’s biggest infrastructure project and will complete a missing link in Melbourne’s freeway network. The project features nine grade separated interchanges connecting 11 existing roads including three freeway to freeway connections. The construction task involved 45 separate bridge structures, three million cubic metres of earthworks, 380,000 tonnes of asphalt and the planting of 1.5 million trees and plants. The project also included a 25 kilometre walking and cycling trail, which is the largest single addition to Melbourne’s shared use path network in recent years.
The Aurecon-SKM Joint Venture was structured to achieve the most efficient high performing team possible using the ‘best for project’ staff and processes each organisation had to offer, while providing an equitable share of revenue, profit and risk. A fully integrated Joint Venture was formed, with the team structured to achieve a mix of Aurecon and SKM staff throughout the different disciplines and at each technical and managerial level. Teams that were used to working with each other within their respective organisations were specifically broken up and mixed with those of the other organisation to break down company barriers and promote a feeling of belonging to the project team and not the parent organisation. This organisation structure was absolutely critical to the effectiveness of the Joint Venture.
The design of a road project as large as Peninsula Link was as much a logistical challenge as a technical one. This included developing in excess of 5,000 construction drawings within a 12 month programme and to exacting quality standards. The project was broken down into design packages consisting of, for example, individual bridges, side roads, 5 kilometre sections of freeway and sections of drainage design. In total there were approximately 110 packages. The design team was split into delivery teams focussing on approximately seven design packages each. With the design progressing on multiple fronts simultaneously, one of the biggest challenges was ensuring that changes to one package were communicated to other teams impacted by this change. This created a significant time commitment resulting in discipline leaders spending as much time reviewing other disciplines’ work as their own (interdisciplinary checking).
In developing the design, a multitude of reviewers and stakeholders were required to approve or provide input into the design process. This involved six design review gates for each package prior to being issued for construction. There were over a dozen key stakeholders, reviewers and approvers involved in this process including the Independent Reviewer, LMA, VicRoads, the Proof Engineer, Abigroup, Conneq (now Lend Lease Infrastructure Services), the Operation and Maintenance Safety Auditor, Road Safety Auditor, three Councils, the water authority, several utility companies and bicycle groups. Achieving their sometimes conflicting requirements was a major challenge and this was achieved through a combined effort between Abigroup and the Aurecon – SKM Joint Venture.
Both Aurecon and SKM implement work-sharing on major projects to meet resourcing, cost optimisation and delivery deadlines.
The lower cost base presented obvious budget savings as well as offered the programme flexibility to deliver multiple design packages in parallel using external design resources was also a large benefit to the project.
Even with the combined resources of two major consultants it was a major challenge to provide the number of resources required to meet the delivery targets, with the design team peaking at well over 100 staff. To meet this challenge, the design and documentation of six bridges was carried out off-shore by Aurecon’s Pretoria and SKM’s Kuala Lumpar offices. In addition, design verification was provided by several design offices around Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and South Africa and other specialist input or resources were provided from almost all of Aurecon and SKM’s other major Australian offices.
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Aurecon is the technical advisor for the Australian Government's $30 million GET Grant Program, funding 14 projects to enhance energy grid resilience.
Aurecon to deliver project management services for critical hybrid renewable energy project, Gawara Baya Wind Farm and battery storage in North Queensland.
Aurecon provided the multidisciplinary engineering design for a purpose-built facility that will enable SKAO, the world's largest radio telescope.
