Laing O'rourke Hosts International Rail Delegation

Laing O’Rourke recently played host to a major delegation from the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE) at the circa $200 million New Generation Rolling Stock (NGRS) maintenance centre in Queensland.

More than 180 signal engineers joined the visit, being shown first-hand how Laing O’Rourke deployed its unique approaches to digital engineering and Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) to make the project a success.

Client Bombardier Transport is providing the maintenance centre to the Queensland Government under a PPP arrangement, in the state’s largest ever investment in public transport.

The new train maintenance centre at Wulkuraka, west of Brisbane, will facilitate the delivery, servicing and 32 years of maintenance on 75 new metro trains. It has the capacity to lift a six-car, 280 tonne train completely off the ground for inspections.

Laing O’Rourke’s work on the project was showcased by Queensland University of Technology during the Brisbane G20 meetings in 2014, as a leading-edge example of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for infrastructure – or what we refer to as Digital Engineering.

The integrated digital model was used to underpin the sophisticated coordination required on the complex site, where the team would otherwise have encountered more than 1,000 possible in-ground services conflicts. Staff accessed the information with iPads in the field or through augmented reality walk-throughs.

Around 20 per cent of the capital value of the project has also been manufactured off-site, through the creation and installation of in-ground precast service roads and pits as well as high-level, modular steel walkways and gantries, and utilising lightweight castellated beam sections to allow full roof structure bays to be made up at ground level and lifted up and into place.

Laing O’Rourke’s Project Director Paul Barrie said it was a pleasure to welcome the delegation on site.

“It was a fantastic opportunity for us to demonstrate the practical and project-based evidence of our investment in the people and technology that can challenge and change traditional methods of construction.”

The project will be complete in 2016.