Civil Construction
Assignment 1.
29 October 2012
Michael McCormick
Index page………… 1. Project- South West Rail Link
Principal- Transport Projects Department NSW
Contractor- John Holland Pty Ltd

2. Introduction to the Project
The South West Rail Link includes a major upgrade of the Glenfield Station and interchange and a new twin track passenger rail line from Glenfield to Leppington via Edmondson Park. Transport for NSW is delivering the project on behalf of the NSW Government. John Holland has been appointed to design and Construct the project between Glenfield south and Leppington.
The project will provide: * A new rail line between the existing rail corridor at Glenfield and the new Train Stabling Facility at Rosmore including tracks, embankments, cuttings, bridges and culverts. * New railway stations at Edmondson Park and Leppington including commuter car parks.
The project civil scope involves the construction of: 1. 11.4 km of new rail line 2. There are seven underbridges to carry the rail line over the road 3. There are 5 over bridges to carry the rail line under the road. 4. 23 box culvert crossings 5. 2 stations 6. 1 stabling yard that holds 20 train sets (cars each) 7. 1 million cubic metres of cut fill earthworks 8. Retaining walls and soil nail walls to the cut areas 9. … cubic metres of concrete 10. …. Tonnes of reinforcing steel 11. An overhead viaduct 600m long at Cowpasture Rd.
The work force currently employed directly on site by John Holland is 210 be engineers, supervisor and direct workforce. There are approximately a further 800 workforce employed by the subcontractors carrying out the works. There were also some 200 designers, engineers and draughts people involved in the design work. 3. Works
In the following I have selected some of the work activities viewed on the construction site. Where possible I have described the plant and equipment involved in the works and described the work sequence.

Soil nailed walls
Soil nailed walls are constructed simultaneously with the earthworks cut operations. They are cheaper and faster to construct than a conventional retaining wall as they save on the amount of formwork, concrete and reduce the amount of fill and cut required for the conventional retaining wall. The soil nailed wall also works well in a confined space like a railway corridor.
The engineer stated that there were 5 separate teams of 12 men working at different soil nailed walls through the project.
Basically the sequence is as follows:- 1. The top of the wall is benched so that the capping beam can be formed and poured. There are conduits left in the capping beam to allow the holes to be drilled for the soil nails.
Photos of the capping beam 2. The back of the wall is then cut at a slope to the vertical bellow the capping beam so that the drilling machine can drill the first 2 rows of the soil nails to the depths shown on the drawings for that wall
Picture of the drilling machine and the excavated wall if I have one……? 3. The soil nails are then placed in the bored holes and grouted and left to cure for at least 7days. The grout needs to reach 67% of its design strength. The drainage cell and the galvanised mesh is then place on the wall with spacers.
Pictures of the wall with the mesh and bolts in place 4. The wall is then covered with a sprayed concrete layer to the correct depth then trimmed off
Pictures of the spraying operation 5. If the earthworks cut needs to be deeper than the cut is then made deeper and the soil nailed wall sequence above is repeated. The wall is extended deeper as the cut is excavated.
Plant and equipment * Formwork and reinforcing steel for the capping beam * Frana crane to place the formwork. * Excavators to cut the walls * Air compressors and spraying equipment for the concrete walls * Concrete agitator trucks * Utes for the transport of men and small materials
Pics of the plant?

Earthworks
The earthworks were very carefully planned. The engineers considered the quality of the soils to determine whether it could be used in select fill(under structures like retaining walls or abutments etc), general fill under the rail line or roads or whether it was unsuitable fill material in which case it was stockpiled for noise mounds etc.
The soils on the project were graded using the Californian Bearing Ratio or CBR to determine which soil could be used in which fill. A soil with a CBR of 8 or better could be used as select fill, a soil with a CBR of 5 could be used as general fill but soils less than CBR of 3 were used in large noise mounds. Sometimes soils were treated with lime and then compacted to get better CBR ratios.
The engineers always tried to balance the amount of cut and fill required so that there was not surplus. This becomes very difficult especially if the qualities of the soils are different form the early geotechnical soils assessment. The engineers were always checking the CBR of the soils to make sure that the soils had a high enough CBR but on site and lab testing. Pics of the stabling yard zoomed in a bit

-Cut and fill operations
Where the cut and fill has to only travel a short distance and the soils were clay or highly weathered rock then the cute was done with scrapers which could cut the soil out of the ground, then transport the soil to the fill area and place it in a layer. Sometimes the scrapers are assisted with dozers to push the scrapers when they were loading. On this project they used Caterpillar 633 scrapers and high track Caterpillar D8H dozers. Pics of scapers and dozers here
Where the cut and fill has to travel a longer distance or the soils were harder (soft rock) or the area was in a deeper cutting the soils/ rock were excavated with a tracked excavator. This was in turn transported with large 6 wheeled dump trucks to the fill site where the loads were dumped. The excavators used on this project were usually 40-80 tonne and the trucks were Volvo 740’s. They called them Moxy’s. Pics of excavators and moxy’s
The fill was delivered by the scrapers or the 6 wheeled dump trucks. The fill delivered by the scrapers could be levels out but the pad foot vibrating compactor which had a blade on the front of it or a dozer which levelled the fill and also track rolled it. If the fill was delivered by the 6 wheeled dump truck then the loads had to be levelled by the dozer. Then compaction was done by the pad foot compactor in layers. The placed fill sometimes had to be dried which was done with a grader to turn the soil and left to dry in the sun. Other time the fill had to be wetted down with a water truck, mixed then compacted again. These operations were controlled by a geotechnical engineer and to get the correct compactor required by the designers. The designers could specify different compactions which ion this project was95%, 98% or 100% mod ASSHO. Pics of compactor, water truck and grader
When the fill reached the correct finished or subgrade level the surface was trimmed of using a grader. The grader was controlled using a GPS and a laser to cut to the correct levels that were on the design drawings. On this project they used a 3D program called MX. Pic of grader
Plant and equipment
-Scraper- Cat 633 (30m3)
-Dozer Cat D8H
-Excavator various sizes, 40-80 tonne
-6 wheeled dump truck, Volvo 740
-Water tanker
-Pad foot vibrating compactor
-Grader, Cat 14 G
- Truck and trailer
Piling
Piling works were used to support structures throughout the project. Piles were used to support bridges, viaducts, light poles and the overhead wiring structures for the train catenary.
The piles varied in sizes from 600mm to 1200mm diameter. Most of the piles had to reach a particular class of rock (say class 3 shale) and then the pile had to be socketed a minimum into that rock (usually another 3.2m)
The drilling machine could use an auger to get to the rock. The auger was then changed to a circular core which cut a ring of rock out to form the pile. Once the hole reached the correct depth it was cleaned out with a cleaning bucket which had non return flaps on the bottom of it. Pics of the bucket and drilling rig
A reinforcement cage was then lowered into the pile an was held off the sides and bottom by spacers. The pile was then poured with concrete. They used a tremmie so that the concrete did not segregate. The pile was finished with a formed concrete cap which was poured with the hold down bolts for the steel structure that went on top. Pics of concrete truck, tremmie and the pile cap.
Plant and equipment
-truck mounted drilling rig with augers and rock cores
-concrete agitator trucks
-slid steer excavator to place reinforcement and move materials
Rock cutting
On the project there were sections of rock which had to be cut in order to allow the train line to maintain a minimum gradient change. The largest rock cutting was at cut 1 where the rail line had to also pass under the Hume Highway.
The rock in cut 1 required a cut of 12m into hard rock extending approximately 400m on the eastern side and 200m on the western side of the Hume Highway. The rock in the top levels was class 5-3 shale which could be seen to break out in slabs so that the excavators with rock breakers could make good progress. However the lower layers in the cut were a class 1 - 2 sandstone which was very hard and did not have many fractures and so required very heavy excavators and rock breakers. Very slow progress was made in this rock. At the time of viewing in October the rock breakers (four) had been there 4 moths and there was still 5 m further to excavate. Pic of the excavators rock breaking
The rock was excavated after the rock breaking, loaded into Volvo 740 dumpers and taken to the stockpile beside a crushing plant. The crushing plant after crushing the rock then graded and mixed the crushed rock so that it was suitable for road sub base course, rip pap at the culvert entrances and exits and construction roads. Pic of crusher?
As the rock was very hard the retaining walls that were originally designed for this area could be omitted. However the walls still had to be trimmed with rock saws to achieve the required profiles of the cut. The engineer said that the rock had to be weather tested in an accelerated test to make sure that it would not fret and meet the 100year design life. Pic of rock saw
The rail line extends under the Hume Highway via a tunnel. The tunnel roof was constructed by coring a series of 600 mm diameter tubes through the rock under the highway which were grout filled. It is intention to break out the rock with excavator and rock hammers and progressively support the roof with steel arches. This will be encased with concrete. The highway was checked every day to monitor any settlement. The engineer said that the rock drilling team would have known from their machinery whether there any settlement immediately. Pics drilling machinery of the drilling machines
Equipment
-80 tonne excavator with rock hammer
-excavator for loading dump trucks -6 wheeled dump truck, Volvo 740
-Water tanker
-Excavator with rock saw
- rock crushing plant
- rock coring machinery

Structures
There were structures that were also being constructed on this project. As they were not civil works they were not considered for this report.
However it was very interesting to see how well they organised operations. The engineer who showing me around the project explained the amount of planning and temporary design work required when building the structures.
Workplace Health and Safety
………………………..WHS……………….……
Induction
Safety signs
Radio procedure s and control through the whole site
No passing any plant unless the operator can see you
PPE
Fences, stairs, construction tape for path ways, give way to all plant, aberrance’s to the road rules strictly.
Pics of stairs and scaffolds and safety signs

Conclusion
The SWRL project was a very large infrastructure project that involved many engineering disciplines. This report focussed on some key civil activities but there were also many structures in the project.
There was much design work that was done before the works were started on site. There were many investigations that occurred such as the investigations on the geotechnical ground conditions, a study of hydrology to see where all the water flowed in a storm and even included identifying the trees and shrub that grew in the area so that the correct plants could be used. The engineers even did construction safety checks on their designs before they were approved.
The planning involved in organising each construction activity was very detailed and thorough. Particular attention was paid to the safety aspects and every activity was reviewed and signed off by senior engineers before the work was allowed to proceed.
Actually viewing the construction happening was very informative and assisted with understanding the lessons in class. The reality is that that our lessons in class give us the basics and when actually doing each construction activity takes a great deal of planning to actually be able to build safely.
At this point I would like to thank John Holland and particularly Tom Bentley- Site Engineer for their time and assistance.
References
-SWRL design plans….. repeat
Appendices and References * Drawings to indicate the extent of the line * Perspectives of the bridges and structures * Perspective of the ….. Station in the cut. * SWRL selected drawings