Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Client
Transport for NSW
D&C Contractor
CPB Contractors
Structural, Civil & Facade
Engineer
Taylor Thomson Whitting
For both the Railway House and One Margaret Street transfer and
tunnelling works, specific innovations included:
From an early stage of the design process, it was clear that the best way to • Optimising the reference design and improving on precedent by keeping
address all the constraints concurrently while providing the optimal project new structural works fully within building basements, to minimise disruption.
outcome, was to adopt an innovative Ground-Structure Interaction design • Use of the Slimline Optical Televiewer, which is a high-resolution borehole
approach. This approach used the full-strength contribution of both the camera to precisely identify and monitor ground conditions beneath critical
ground and structure in the engineering design, thereby allowing space to foundations, thereby eliminating ground condition risks during construction
be maximised, and building settlements to be minimised. and providing certainty of design and program. This downhole camera was
different to the typical Optical Televiewer (OTV) and Acoustic Televiewer
(ATV) imaging undertaken in the geotechnical industry, because it provided
a 360 degree high-resolution photograph of the borehole wall, removing the
uncertainty that is often involved with interpretation of borehole imaging.
Figure 7: Underground ‘Y-intersection’ in the tunnel –
Installing three-dimensional reinforcement
For the One Margaret Street works, specific design innovations included:
• Modelling and design of the tunnel temporary and permanent support and
Figure 6: Railway House Real-Time Settlement Monitoring tunnel excavation sequence to ensure that, once the in-basement transfer
• Specification and implementation of real time settlement monitoring structure was complete, the tunnel could progress beneath the building
systems to continually monitor settlement of the buildings and allow without having to undertake further works within the basement.
construction to respond to any movement that was observed. This was a
• The underground ‘Y-intersection’ in the Wynyard Walk tunnel was a
high precision system (accuracy better than 0.5 mm) which provided data to
three-dimensional reinforced concrete structure, with load response
a web interface in real time, and also featured automatically generated alerts
behaviour that changed throughout the construction. Initially functioning as
by email and SMS. This system was key in demonstrating management
a two-dimensional arch, the concrete structure was then required to act as a
of the effects of the works to stakeholders, and providing feedback to the
three-dimensional ‘shell’ to allow a large-span breakout of the tunnel through
designers and builder during construction.
one of the sidewalls. To investigate, analyse and design this complex
• Use of a fully integrated three-dimensional Building Information Model structure, advanced three-dimensional numerical modelling was combined
(BIM) to develop concept designs – identifying constraints and the best with an innovative ‘sandwich’ model, which optimised the reinforced
places to accommodate building loads in, on, and around the tunnel and concrete design well beyond what would be possible with two-dimensional
excavations. design approaches.
For the Railway House works, 4. Outcomes of the
specific design innovations Design Innovation
included: