The 1,000th precast tunnel segment has been produced for Adelaide’s River Torrens to Darlington (T2D) Project.
More than 55,000 concrete segments will be manufactured at the Waterloo Corner facility to line both the Northern and Southern Tunnels.
Up to 160 tunnel-lining segments weighing about 12 tonnes each will be manufactured every day during the peak period inside the 285m-long shed.
Supporting the operation is the facility’s on-site concrete batch plant, which will supply the 280,000m3 of concrete required for the segments.
Once manufactured, the segments will be transported to the TBM launch areas, where they will be placed on electric multi-service vehicles to deliver them to the TBMs.
In an Australian first, a nationally recognised Certificate III in Manufacturing Mineral Products (Precast) has been introduced to support the project’s growing precast workforce.
More than 60 workers have already enrolled in the traineeship, helping lay the foundations for a skilled local workforce long after tunnelling is complete.
The three cutterheads have been craned into place and tunnelling is expected to start on the A$15.4bn (€9.43bn) road project later this year. A consortium of John Holland, Bouygues Construction, Arcadis Australia, Jacobs and Ventia will use three TBMs to excavate the 4km twin Southern Tunnels and the 2.2km twin Northern Tunnels.
