Work starts on next Sydney Metro precast factory

The bespoke facility at Eastern Creek will manufacture more than 70,000 precast concrete segments needed to line the Sydney Metro West twin tunnels from The Bays to Sydney Olympic Park.

The shed is 27m wide, 175m long and almost 12m at its highest point. More than 31,000 tonnes of excavated material from the nearby Eastern Creek Speedway has been reused at the facility site, minimising cost and landfill on both sites.

The precast concrete segment facility is expected to be operational by the end of the year to start stockpiling the segments ahead of tunnelling.

It will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Two other facilities will be built at the same location to service the other two stages of Sydney Metro West.

The project, part of Sydney Metro, Australia’s largest public transport endeavour, includes three tunnelling contracts.

A joint venture between Acciona and Ferrovial is building the twin 11km tunnels for the central section of the Sydney Metro West Line. The Gamuda Australia and Laing O’Rourke Consortium has the Western Tunnelling contract to deliver 9km of twin metro rail tunnels between Sydney Olympic Park and Westmead.

The contract for the third tunnelling package – the Eastern tunnelling between The Bays and Hunter St in Sydney’s CBD – is expected to be awarded later this year. The shortlisted consortia are: Acciona Construction Australia and Ferrovial Construction joint venture (AF JV); Bouygues Construction Australia, Vinci Construction Grands Projets Australia and Soletanche Bachy International joint venture (BV JV); and John Holland, CPB Contractors and Ghella joint venture (JCG JV).