Instrumentation and Monitoring at Central Station, Sydney
Products used:
- Horizontal In-Place Inclinometers (profiles of up to 75m)
- Borehole Profile In-Place Inclinometers
- Tiltmeters
- Tilt Beams
- Rail Deformation System
- Strain Gauges
- Worldsensing LS-G6 Wireless System
Contact us to discuss about your railway monitoring project.
Overview
Sydney Metro is Australia’s biggest public transport project and Central Station is Australia’s busiest railway station. The station will serve as an interchange between the metro, the city train services and country terminals. Laing O’Rourke is tasked with delivering the new Sydney Metro platform under Central Station as well as the landmark Central Walk – a new underground pedestrian concourse to help customers get around Sydney’s busiest railway station.
To minimise impact to commuters and deliver in an efficient and safe manner, the metro box construction phase was sequenced from the top down, rather than the bottom up. This included a number of challenges, such as excavating under live railways, linking to existing infrastructure at the station and deep excavation 27 metres below ground level. Central station is a historic site and contains a number of heritage buildings for consideration. A detailed monitoring regime was required to ensure satisfaction and protection of the interests of all involved stake holders.
Geomotion Works
Geomotion as part of GLS Monitoring joint venture was involved in providing project wide geospatial, geotechnical and structural instruments and monitoring for the metro box construction. This included project management, application engineering, detailed design drawings and heritage approvals for the monitoring regime. As construction progressed, Geomotion provided a flexible approach and was able to propose solutions that presented cost-saving alternatives to the customer.
All geotechnical instrumentation and monitoring survey data is hosted on a web-based Monitoring Information Management System (MIMS); and threshold tolerances set in MIMS to automatically generate alarms and send notifications to the GLS Monitoring team and client, wherever pre-set tolerances are exceeded.
Due to the nature of some activities, in order to minimise impacts to rail travellers and for the safety of works, the majority of work occurred outside standard construction hours and when trains are not running, on night shift.
Results
Geomotion provided a reliable and easy-to-deploy monitoring solution for:
- Convergence and axial shortening monitoring
- Rail deformation monitoring for twist, cant and settlement profile
- Strain monitoring in structural members and slabs
- Building deflection monitoring
The majority of the monitoring was achieved using our excellent solar powered and wireless communication system supplied by Worldsensing.
