Design•Build

Racing to prepare for the 2000 Summer Olympics,Sydney, Australia, is using design-build to accelerate

massive sewer upgrades and a host of other jobs

Mates Winning Relay

Scenic Tunks Park is just one of the many posh boating communities in need of relief from the Northside Storage Tunnel. The $300 million,20-km structure will increase water and sewer capacity and catch the frequent overflows that often muddy the pristine waters.

Visitors to Australia’s Sydney Harbor are often agog at itspristine grandeur. The water is so crystal clear that severalspecies of sea life often are visible down to the sandy bot-tom. One sudden cloudburst, however, and torrents ofrain can churn the picture postcard into a kitchen sink.

And, unfortunately, that occurrence is far from rare.About 20 times per year, rainwater seeps into the city’s old

and worn concrete, clay and brick sewer lines, which over-flow at some 3,000 points and dump wastewater and de-bris into the 22km-long serpentine harbor.

In 1997, managers at Sydney Water Corp. had beenworking for about six years to correct the problem whenthe International Olympic Committee chose their city tohost the 2000 Summer Olympics. That catapulted the har-

By Mary Buckner PowersThe author is a Birmingham, AL-based journalist whohas covered industry topics for McGraw-Hill since 1986.Previously, she was a news reporter in Lexington, KY

Design•Build

bor cleanup project into high gear and sent managers scur-rying to find ways to increase wastewater capacity by 500million liters in just two and a half years.

Faced with such an enormous undertaking, Sydney Wa-ter officials knew from the start that they would have to becreative. After developing a conceptual design, preparingan environmental impact statement and evaluating projectdelivery options, they realized that the only way to com-plete all the work on time was to use “alliancing,” a fast-trackapproach developed by the oil and gas industry. But noone in Australia had ever used it on a public project before.

Undaunted, Sydney Water forged ahead because the

Part of the most massive construction mobilization in Australia’s history, the accelerated tunnel work has benefitted from the use of anopen-book “alliance” structure that brings the design-build team even deaper into the mix, joined more closely with the owner.

agency wanted to set up one team that could find the bestsolution, then design it and build it. “We defined the projectin terms of outcomes and left the design open,” explainsGreg Klamus the agency’s project director.

The solution that emerged is the $300-million, 20-km-long Northside Storage Tunnel, designed to hold wetweather overflows until an existing sewage treatment plantcan be expanded to handle the extra flow. Now 90% de-signed and 40% complete, the tunnel meanders along thenorth side of the harbor to pick up overflow from the fourlargest sources. The untreated sewage will flow east wardby gravity to the end of the line at North Head. There, a

Now 40% complete, tunneling began earlier this year in Tunks Park and has progressed steadily in three separate directions.

Design•Build

Pressed for time but unable to use explosives, the alliance has used four tunnel boring machines, three in the 6-m-dia. range and one witha diameter just under 4 m. Luckily, the work has been aided by the relative stability of surrounding Hawkesbury sandstone.

Owner input in thealliance is its most“vivid difference.”

From left, Callaghan, Rashidi and Cuttlerhave all kept the team on the same page.

two-phase pump system will lift thewastewater to the treatment plant atthe surface, which is also being up-graded to hike capacity.

Forging alliesTwo years ago, Sydney Water hired

JMJ Associates, Austin, TX, to designa process to select the right team forthe job. The firm created a requestfor proposals that did not includeprice as a criteria, recalls Steve Knisely,managing director of JMJ’s office inMelbourne.

Instead, the new RFP was muchmore subjective. It asked prospectivebidders how capable they were ofparticipating in an “alliance” type ofpartnership, he says. “The interviewswere not about our technical exper-tise or experience–they were about how we would respondas a team,” recalls Abdul Rashidi, engineering manager anddeputy project manager for Montgomery Watson, Pasa-dena.

Once the list was shortened to two teams, two-day work-shops were held with each to assess their ability to meetthe five objectives that Sydney Water had prioritized forthe project: time, cost, environmental protection, commu-nity relations and safety.

In January 1998, the agency chosethe team led by Montgomery Watson.The U.S. firm is lead engineer andconstruction manager for the job,joined by two Sydney-based partners,structural and tunneling engineerConnell Wagner and contractorTransfield Ltd.

Under the terms of the alliance, thefirms are rewarded or penalized basedon how well they achieve each of thefive objectives. “That’s a real challenge[because] some of the five are mutu-ally exclusive,” says John Callaghan,design manager for Connell Wagner.Ultimately, the team will split equallyboth the cost overruns and the costsavings, he adds.

Of note, the alliance also includesthe client as part of the team. “That

is a vivid difference between design-build and alliancing,”says Rashidi.

Alliancing also creates a no-blame culture. From the out-set, the team decides on the costs and scope of work andsolves problems and makes decisions together. There areno change orders.

But what makes alliancing so different from traditionaldesign-build is that all its members are responsible for theaccounting, administration, commissioning and close out.

Design•Build

Homebush Bay will be Sydney’s track and field mecca for the 2000 Summer Games. Already, one110,000-seat stadium is complete and all other facilities are on pace for early arrival.

The Northside Tunnel is only one in a field of manyjobs being rushed to meet the September 2000 dead-line for Sydney’s Summer Olympic Games.

In total, some $2.5 billion worth of work must bedone in three years for the games to begin. And justlike in Salt Lake City–where preparations for the 2002Winter Games are now in high gear–Olympic coordi-nators in Australia have turned to designbuild to meettheir deadline (DB p. 33, 1/98).

Now, one year before the games open, all but fiveprojects are finished. They include a 110,000-seatstadium and a 3.5-mile rail tunnel, designed and builtin two years and 15 months, respectively. All otherwork will be complete by the end of the year.

“It is the largest undertaking in the country ever,”says Bob Leece, deputy director general of the SydneyOlympic Coordination Authority and former generalmanager of Australia’s largest construction company,

Transfield Ltd., Sydney.Nearly $1 billion of the projects were financed by

private sources, including the stadium and a separatearena. That work was awarded as design-build-operatecontracts, which took the delivery risk away, says Leece.“We gave them to Australia’s top performing firms,” hesays.

Projects were awarded in large packages, $350million or more. “Three years ago, the Olympic villagewas a wasteland,” notes Leece. “Now it is almostfinished. Design-construct enabled us to do it.”

All supporting infrastructure and services includingroads, electricity, water and wastewater systems alsowere built using design-build contracts. The committeedeveloped a master plan and impaneled an architec-tural design team to monitor the design created by thedesign-build teams.

Designers and builders are forced to abide by strictenvironmental guidelines,which include recycling,reuse and the reduction ofwaste. They are alsoexpected to use a minimalamount of material thatcreate pollution in theirmanufacture, use ordisposal. Instead ofconcrete and steel, forinstance, builders are usingplastic timber products andrecycled concrete andmasonry rubble.

Designs must meetcertain environmentalobjectives, too, says Leece.Venues are designed to usenatural ventilation insteadof air conditioning and

Tunnel just part of monumental effort to prepare Sydney for world stage

And “the owners have access to all the books,” notesRashidi.

Because each firm takes a risk position in the overalloutcome and both its profit and overhead are at risk,every member of the team is focused on the end result,not on protecting itself. It’s a mindset so novel that JMJactually had to coach members on how to participate sofreely.

“This is not team building-it’s much more focused onbusiness results. It has a much harder edge,” says Knisely.“We help the team achieve high performance and break-throughs, not incremental improvements.” he says.

The best example to date is the team’s reduction of 22weeks from the original schedule.

At its root, alliancing is based on best practices theory,in which all options are considered and the best chosen.“It allows people to be innovative,” says Rashidi.

Sydney Water officials say the concept is proving to besuperb. To date, they have not had a contract dispute orseen a claim from any of the members. “Instead, wespend our time debating and arguing about how to im-prove the project,” says Sydney Water’s Klamus

Still, it has not all been easy. The alliance has required alot more work than expected on everyone’s part and

Design•Build

Eastern Distributor toll road is aprivatized design-build addition.

solar panels toproduce lightthroughout theentire OlympicVillage and itsmany venues. “Wewill generate morethan we need. Therest will be pushedback into thepower grid,” hesays. Watersystems aredesigned to recyclewastewater backinto buildings fortoilets, irrigationand washdownfacilities.

The OlympicPark, itself, is an

environmental accomplishment. The Homebush Bayarea of the city, which houses the stadium, arena,athletes’ village, aquatic center and other major venues,was an environmental wasteland, contaminated with 9million cu m of domestic, commercial and industrialwaste. A $137-million remediation of the site wascompleted last year.

Two large design-build projects not part of theOlympic venue, but necessary for successful Gamesare a rail link and a tollroad to the airport. Both aretunnels. Transfield, the Northside Tunnel contractor, isbuilding the $470-million, 10km underground railwaylink between the airport and the central businessdistrict under a joint venture with the French firmBouygues. They will own and operate the link for 30years under a design-build-own-operate contract.

Of note, the airport link tunnel boring machine isthe largest machine ever used in Australia at 10.72 m indiameter, says a joint venture spokeswoman. It com-pleted excavation in May.

The 6-km Eastern Distributor toll road, also linkingthe central business district to the airport, includes a

1.7-km tunnel, one of only three double-deckertunnels in the world. “The government wanted theproject in place by the Olympics, but couldn’t affordit,” says Gordon Ralph project manager, LeightonContractors, Sydney.

So Leighton, with its partner Macquarie Bank, raisedenough equity and assumed the debt to win the$435-million project. Now, they are designing andbuilding the tollroad, and will operate and maintain itfor 48 years. “We’re responsible for it all,” says Ralph.

The design was subcontracted to the Australianarchitect, Maunsell McIntyre Ltd., who is the leadconsultant. Leighton is building the project.

The contract had called for the road to be completedthree weeks before the Olympics begin, but Leightonwanted it completed as early as possible to have itoperating smoothly by next September. Now 80%complete, the stepped-up pace will have the toll roadopened and operat-ing by the end ofthis year.

Participants in themassive projects inSydney agree thatinnovative thinkerswithin the govern-ment and theOlympic authoritydeserve the creditfor getting the cityready for theSeptember 2000event. “With design-construct, we wereable to get largegovernment con-trolled projects builton time and underbudget,” says Leece.

Olympic Park site opend last year,but more rail links are coming

“there have been some glitches,” Klamus admits. Many ofthe problems have been members who simply could notadapt to the team mentality.

“This process is not for everyone. Some people will de-select themselves,” says Knisely. Indeed, the tunnel team,including members from the client, has had about 25%turnover since the tunnel project was awarded 20 monthsago.

While simply getting all members of the team to playtogether was a challenge, the single most difficult problemto date has been community relations. “When you’re work-ing next to the most expensive properties in Sydney you

have to find different ways to do business,” says CharlesRottier, manager of Montgomery Watson Australia and amember of the project’s steering committee.

Holding hands

The team gleaned the concepts used to develop a goodsafety system and applied them to community relations, anessential consideration considering the project’s highpricedsurroundings. Six community groups have been in frequentcontact with the team, which in turn has aimed to pleasethem, taking steps to adjust the job to accommodate as

Design•Build

many concerns as possible, says Rottier. In one instance,when the community complained about the prospectivenoise from a spoil removal site located on a park, the alli-ance responded. Engineersmoved the site from one end ofthe park to the waterfront. “Wefocused on a solution, not [on]fixing blame,” says RussellCuttler, construction managerfor Transfield.

Earlier, residents already hadnixed the idea of building newwastewater treatment plants inthe neighborhoods with thetroublesome overflow pointsbefore the problem was turnedover to the alliance. The teamlooked at building catchmentcaverns as a solution, but decidedon a tunnel because of its flex-ibility, says Klamus.

Sewage could be diverted tothe tunnel during the repair ofsewer lines, and sewage at a major treatment plant couldbe pumped into the tunnel during power failures ratherthan dumping it into the ocean, as is done now, he says.But most interestingly, the tunnel was designed to be usedin the future for reuse water. “We built in flexibility by de-signing it to flow in either direction,” Klamus says.

Boring drills

At its shallowest point, the Northside Storage Tunnel is40 m below sea level. It descends another 60 m along its20-km length. In the hilly terrain of Sydney’s north side, itranges from 60 m to 170 m below ground. About two thirdsof the structure will range between 6 m and 6.5 m in diam-eter. The remainder will be 3.8 m in diameter. All told, itwill have a capacity of 510 megaliters.

To meet the aggressive schedule, the team opted to usefour tunnel boring machines (TBM): three between 6 and6.5 m in diameter and one smaller, 3.8-m machine. No blast-ing was allowed for any of the excavation. This summer atTunks Park, the three larger machines began tunneling, eachin a different direction. The 3.8-m TBM is heading westtoward Lane Cove, 6.7 km away.

The tunnel, through relatively stable Hawkesbury sand-stone, will be lined and coated only where geologic andhydraulic considerations dictate, says Cuttler. They are ex-pecting to grout a 300-m area where the tunnel underlies aportion of the harbor, he adds.

The logistics of operating four TBMs at the same time

was challenge in itself, but the biggest headache was grap-pling with 2 million tons of spoil–8,000 tons a day–pro-duced in prime Sydney real estate, where the well-to-do

residents are known to be finicky and not shy. Downplayingthe more straightforward tunneling details, design managerCallaghan says the greater challenge “is keeping the com-munities happy.”

For instance, residents near Tunks Park didn’t want thespoil removed from their area by truck. So rock from thethree TBMs that started there is moved by conveyorsthrough a 6-x-6-m vehicle access decline to a wharf, whereit is loaded onto 2,000-ton barges. The loading operationtakes place in a 40-x-50-m acoustic enclosure to keep thenoise down to a mandated five decibels above backgroundlevels. The material is then transferred to trains and routedto a quarry to be ground into aggregate.

At North Head, the spoil is lifted 170 m to ground levelon a 1,600-mm-wide, 650-tons-per-hour vertical conveyor.The material is loaded onto a conveyor in a 1.4-km-longtunnel and moved to Little Manly Point. That tunnel, donewith the 3.8-m TBM, was completed Dec. 3.

The wharf and barge loading facilities at Little ManlyPoint had a special set of limitations. The site is part of anaquatic preserve, so special precautions had to be taken toprotect both sea grass and Fairy Penguins. The alliance wasnot allowed to put permanent piles in the aquatic preserveand the piles had to be screwed in rather than hammeredto reduce noise levels. Even the amount of time a shadowcould be cast on sea grasses by the barges is limited. Andbarges must stop loading one hour before dusk to protectthe penguins.

To reduce noise for residents, rock is processed through this 40-x-50-m acoustic shed.

Reprinted from Design•Build, August 1999. Copyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies. Inc. with all rights reserved.

Sweet smell a successOdor control also is a major issue for Sydney residents.

The tunnel normally will be ventilated toward North Head,where a 30-cu-mper-sec chemical scrubber cleans the air.But when the tunnel fills, also it will be ventilated at thehead in the plush residential areas. There, activated carbonscrubbers will be installed.

The tunnel will be completely automated, and comput-ers will continually perform hydraulic updates of the en-tire system every three minutes. When the sewage levelsget high enough, weir gates at the four major overflowpoints will be lowered, forcing the excess into concentricspirals at the top of the drop shafts to create a whirlpool.

At the bottom of the shaft, large concrete structureswill be built to slow the water and dissipate the energy cre-ated by the drop. Once the water stills and begins to flow,the air that was picked up at the vortex is released, cap-tured and recirculated back to the vortex. That helps re-duce odor, says Scott Moore, senior engineer for Mont-gomery Watson.

The flow comes to the end of the tunnel at North Head,site of spectacular sandstone cliffs along Sydney’s coastand the location of one of the city’s largest wastewatertreatment plants. The 1,050 megaliters-a-day plant sits about

Design•Build

Sydney’s majestic harbor will benefit from the current raft of projects long after the Olympic Games and its turn on the world stage areover. City officials had been mulling the local sewer woes for years when the International Olympic Committee made its choice.

70 m above sea level. The storage tunnel runs about 100 mbelow sea level.

The new tunnel will intersect with the old sewer systemat the existing sea level pump station below North Head.Flow from the storage tunnel will be lifted by two 175mgl-per-day pumps through to the sea level pump station,where new pumps will be added to take the new flows tothe treatment plant at the surface, which is being expandedto 1,400 mgl-per-day.

If tunnel construction goes as planned, excavationshould be complete by the end of the year, but it will takeuntil early next summer to get it operational. In Septem-ber, opening ceremonies at the 2000 Summer Olympicswill give the project a high profile. But local observers inthe engineering and construction business are watching thedesign-build work for other reasons, too.

“It’s changed industry’s image of Sydney Water,” claimsJMJ’s Knisely. “This was not a typical government bureau-cratic process. No one thought they could do it.”

The alliancing method has since been the model for twoother large public jobs in Australia, the National Museumin Cambra and a wastewater treatment plant in Perth. “Ittook a lot of guts,” adds Knisely. But “Sydney Water’s donean outstanding job.”