Project Description

Project: Sydney Light Rail – Delivery Team
Client: Acciona Infrastructure Australia
Date: 2015-2021

A seconded role to Acciona, Locaters P/L worked in the role of Utility Survey Manager for almost 6 years in both CBD and Suburbs sections of the Sydney Light Rail project. With an extremely complex utility treatments program ultimately leading to the construction of the light rail track slab and stops.

Directly reporting to Acciona’s senior managers and working with Senior Project Engineers and Engineers alike, our responsibilities included resource planning, utilities model rationalisation and data management, Ground Disturbance Permit (GDP) awareness training, scoping, unidentified reporting, SME reporting and compliance auditing.
Interfacing with both the survey and utilities teams, our Utility Survey Managers enabled confidence in the engineering and design decision making process resulting in more efficient cost effective operations of the project.

Project issues:

  • 12kilometres of 2 way track from Circular Quay to Randwick and Kensington via Central Station
  • Local road adjustments and arterial road works
  • Commercial and residential property development and existing local business along the routes
  • Interface with existing Light Rail and heavy rail networks
  • Interfacing with University grounds and Health precincts
  • Known heritage and archaeological sensitivities
  • Project delivery timelines and construction sequencing
  • High-risk utility networks including high pressure gas, optic fibre, transmission electricity, Tank Stream, Telstra Tunnels
  • Poor or non existing record keeping of inground networks over previous 100 years
  • Major congestion of underground networks within key construction areas
  • Community sensitivity around high density residential areas
  • Rapidly changing utility model with asbuilt and updated existing utility data
  • Unidentified utilities management including drill and tap database management

How we we helped:

  • Gained thorough understanding of client requirements
  • Develop and implement custom internal process’s to meet client’s needs
  • Delivery of data back to the project
  • Customised ‘CUD’s’ (Combined Utilities Drawings)
  • Compliance to Acciona’s own process’s and systems
  • Provide feedback and further development around systems and safety
  • Maintain line reporting to Utilities and Survey managers
  • Incident investigation support
  • Facilitate and expedite design changes
  • Ensured secondary capacity to cover sick and annual leave requirements of primary personnel
  • Assist in utility identification and stakeholder engagement
  • Communication to project management team on issues and progress