City: Melbourne

Melbourne Airport’s Terminal 2 (T2) Arrivals Hall redevelopment is an important milestone in delivering an improved arrivals experience for inbound international passengers, whilst also catering for future growth in passenger numbers.

This significant project includes the expansion of the building footprint at Arrivals (ground) level, enhanced connectivity between T2 and the Domestic terminals via new vertical transportation and a new central exit point for arriving passengers from Customs and Baggage Reclaim.

An increased level of service contributes to the overall passenger journey with improved amenities and retail facilities. The development also provides additional capacity for people waiting to greet their loved ones, including much more seating and space.

A key design feature is the new expanded modern façade, which unifies the front door to the Airport providing new entrance portals to both T2 and T3. This design solution provides the redeveloped Arrivals Hall with increased natural light into the expanded floor plate.

Delivering the redevelopment in an operational airport environment and dealing with the ever-changing conditions of a global pandemic, AECOM worked closely with the consultant team, our client and the contractor to deliver the project through detailed staged works limiting impact on operations. By being agile and adapting to new ways of working, AECOM supported the continued delivery of works on site for Melbourne Airport.

Key Challenges

A key challenge of the project was the expansion of the hall into the forecourt area, requiring the accommodation of the existing elevated roadway structure into the redeveloped building envelope. AECOM undertook significant analysis of the existing roadway structure to determine the opportunity to support additional loads from the 50-year old structure. As a result, the requirement to provide an additional layer of structure beneath the existing road structure was removed. This maximised the ceiling height to the Arrivals Hall, increasing natural light penetration.

AECOM’s approach to digital delivery further mitigated project risks in this area by undertaking increased modelling and coordination of both existing and new in-ceiling services in the early design phases to validate the ceiling design concepts and spatial planning.

This approach extended to addressing the significant existing in-ground service constraints on the project with our team drawing on our detailed understanding of Melbourne Airport and its infrastructure. This enabled us to avoid the relocation of critical incoming services without comprising project outcomes, increasing value and reducing risks for APAM.

Our multi-discipline delivery team worked closely with the APAM stakeholder groups to develop a holistic design response that considered whole-of-life and operational requirements, minimised impacts to the daily operation of the Airport and passenger movements as well as providing future-proofed outcomes considerate of the Airport’s Masterplan for further expansion.

AECOM and Jacobs were engaged by Melbourne Water with support from RMIT to measure social value provided by its waterways. AECOM provided asset management leadership and project management support to this project.

Waterway amenity is measured by the often-intangible user experience of the asset, making it challenging to define asset performance in comparison to traditionally built assets. However, like traditional assets, management of waterways requires a clear articulation of the value gained from investment in maintenance and renewal activities, which is not possible unless their performance objectives can be defined and linked to tangible, measurable outcomes.

Approach

To address this challenge, the project team adapted Melbourne Water’s asset management framework to waterways, focusing on defining service and technical objectives of amenity, developing measures and targets to monitor performance and inform evidence-based decisions for ongoing management.

As amenity is measured by often intangible user experience of the natural asset, defining the performance of waterway amenity can be more difficult than for traditionally built assets. For example, defining what it means for a waterway to be ‘pleasant’ or to ‘provide an escape from the urban landscape’ and then measuring this.

To address this involved six key steps:

1. Defining the service objectives associated with amenity social value for vegetation extent: and litter for amenity
2. Defining the associated technical objectives.
3. Defining performance measures and targets for each technical objective.
4. Defining the criticality of assets in meeting amenity social value.
5. Assessing the risk of assets not meeting objectives.
6. Developing a decision-making framework to tailor the type and frequency of interventions.

 Outcomes and Value

As the value of managing natural assets is often intangible or hard to define and measure, application of asset management principles to these assets is a novel undertaking. It gave the ability to set a benchmark and framework for increasing the scope of asset management to natural assets. Upon its completion the successes and lessons learnt from this process are expected to be applied to other waterway classes such as wetlands and on-ground delivery programs that achieve social value outcomes, such as grass cutting.

The project outcomes allow Melbourne Water to make evidence-based decisions on investments across its entire portfolio with consideration given to impacts to all its values. The outcomes of this project also acts as a case study for other organisations with similar challenges associated with defining community focused value from natural assets.

Melbourne Water and AECOM were joint winners of the influential national Asset Management Council 2021 Excellence Awards for the Asset Management Social and Environmental Award category. Melbourne Water Managing Director Michael Wandmaker said to receive the Social and Environmental Award was an honour. “The Award is a testament to our core values as a business.

“This innovative and successful collaboration builds on our role as an essential service provider while enhancing life and liveability for our community”

Wesley Place is a vibrant new workplace destination with three commercial towers rising from this historic precinct. Seamlessly merging business and lifestyle, the precinct comprises the recently completed premium commercial tower, 130 Lonsdale Street, one of Australia’s smartest buildings with 55,000m² of premium-grade office across 35 levels and four skyrise terraces.

130 Lonsdale Street is the flagship tower for Wesley Place, with the new 140 Lonsdale Street tower and 150 Lonsdale Street refurbished tower nearing completion. The 1.1-hectare site offers Melbourne a new and rare green public CBD space surrounded by the restoration of historic buildings such as its namesake Wesley Church.

Charter Hall engaged AECOM to provide structural, civil and geotechnical services for the entire precinct.

Site challenges

AECOM was presented with a structural and buildability challenge. The excavation of the new basements essentially formed an island around the existing heritage Manse building, and the tower design required 30 new levels constructed directly on top. AECOM responded with an innovative engineering solution to construct a protection deck and steel truss to transfer 5,500t of load and bridge the 25m clear span. These works were monitored by AECOM’s Acoustic team to ensure no risk of damage to the heritage building.

Excavating in the CBD was challenging due to adjacent and simultaneous excavations, neighbour concerns, peer review, and risks to the heritage buildings. Recognising the challenge, Lendlease engaged AECOM’s geotechnical team to provide full design services for the site retention. This value-add, AECOM structural-geotechnical joint approach, was pivotal in enabling a timely and coordinated structural design in a high-pressure situation.

The Raking façade and 2-column grid

The façade rakes out up to five metres and conventional practice would be to rake the columns to match. Raking columns result in expensive floors with reduced flexibility for large atrium voids. AECOM provided an alternative 12m x 16m ‘2-column grid’ where straight columns were placed inboard to the façade and cantilevers were deployed to form the building rake.

Our alternative solution reduced column numbers, simplified the structure, increased tenant flexibility and simplified the built form.

Maximising Net Lettable Area (NLA)

With a Gross Floor Area of 85,000m², the core has the single largest impact to NLA. Multiple core configurations were presented and rigorously tested by AECOM for its overall building footprint including:

• Geometric configurations – 3 or 4 bank lift shafts.
• Efficient assignment of wall thicknesses. For every 100mm reduction we achieved in the main wall, over 100m² of NLA was released through the tower.
• Strategically amended wall thicknesses up the tower to coincide with key jump-form changes yielding an additional 3m² of NLA per floor essentially, at nil cost.
• We also challenged services risers and worked with the Mechanical Electrical Plumbing team to relocate risers from the floors into the core which increased the NLA.

Tenant Flexibility

Charter Hall proceeded with the design and construction of Wesley Place with full confidence of signing tenants as the tower emerged. Tenant flexibility was therefore critical in our structural design. In our tenant-centric approach we unbound ourselves from standard carpark grids and let the typical floor drive the design. This grid provides enhanced flexibility as evident with the tenants opting for inter-tenancy voids of 80m² with minimal impact to the structural framing. AECOM were also engaged to provide full integrated fitout for tenants where winter gardens and terrace zones were provided with the base build.

Value-add approach

• Be agile, collaborate and receptive to new ideas. During the unusual protection works period all ideas were considered with multiple structural systems tested, designed and certified.
• Access to international expertise and multi-disciplines can add value at short notice. Engagement of our geotechnical and vibration teams provided timely and comprehensive advice during protection works notices.
• Innovation through design. Exploring alternative design solutions through systemised technology, parametric optimisation and digital engineering – ‘Beyond BIM’
• Extensive experience as leaders in the commercial sector. Sharing ideas from previous projects is ingrained in our culture. The lessons from our 80 Collins Street transfer trusses were successfully applied to the Manse transfer truss.

Overview

Cement, Concrete and Aggregates Australia (CCAA) members are fully committed to the conservation and responsible management of land and biodiversity under their control with the aim of achieving a net positive impact on the environment. This includes meeting their obligations in relation to native vegetation removal. However, the requirement to provide evidence that biodiversity offset credits have been secured prior to commencement of operations creates a significant upfront financial cost to the extractive industry, particularly where a quarry is proposed to be in operation over multiple decades and, in some cases, centuries.

AECOM was engaged to help CCAA investigate alternative financial approaches to meeting native vegetation offset obligations.

Approach

This engagement was undertaken using a combination of desktop review and stakeholder consultation with CCAA members, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and offset credit brokers.

From this, three options were developed to address the challenges associated with securing native vegetation offset credits prior to the commencement of operations, while allowing extractive businesses to meet obligations. These were:

1. Staged payment with security deposit to third-party credit provider
2. Staged payment with forward contract from third-party credit provider
3. Industry-led strategic partnership with third-party credit provider

The implications of the options were assessed relative to business as usual (BAU) using environmental, social and financial criteria. Each of the options would allow extractive businesses to amortise the cost of offset credits over the life of its operations. This would have positive implications for extractive business balance sheets and potentially reducing pressure to increase product prices, which is good for the Victorian economy.

Given the underlying assumptions, each option would also result in lower total costs and cost per credit than the BAU case. However, each option has several disadvantages, which would influence the extent to which they will be acceptable to extractive businesses and the wider community.

Outcomes and Value

Based on the assessment of wider impacts, Option 3 may be considered preferable by the wider community as it has the potential to deliver less fragmented areas of native vegetation across the State, and hence, greater biodiversity outcomes. Option 1 involves limited change from BAU and could be implemented in the short term.

CCAA is now working with the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources to further investigate Option 3.

As lead designer in the Rail Infrastructure Alliance alongside equal construction partners CPB Contractors and John Holland, AECOM will provide the full range of design services for all elements of the project, including tunnel entrances, brownfield rail network enhancements and station improvements.

AECOM expects to mobilise over 150 full-time positions on the project, while some 500 of the infrastructure company’s 3500-strong Australia New Zealand team will, at some point, contribute to the project’s successful delivery over the duration of the contract.

Leveraging AECOM’s global expertise in tunnel portal design, specialists from AECOM’s Hong Kong team have been integral to securing AECOM’s role on the project.

Local rail capability and brownfield rail expertise were also key differentiators in AECOM’s offer.

AECOM Chief Executive – Australia New Zealand, Todd Battley, said the Metro Tunnel was a transformational infrastructure project that prioritised the mobility of Victorians.

“With Melbourne leading Australia’s cities in terms of population growth, the Metro Tunnel Project is critical to keeping the city moving, and Victoria growing,” he said.

“We’re proud to continue our work on infrastructure projects that build cities, and connect communities.

“The Victorian Government has demonstrated great vision to deliver the Metro Tunnel – Victoria’s largest ever public transport project – and we can’t wait to get started with our partners.”

Construction is expected to commence in late 2018 and be completed in 2025.

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s (RMIT) Swanston Academic Building (SAB), located in the heart of Melbourne’s central business district, is home to the university’s College of Business.

Spanning 35000m2 across 11 levels and accommodating up to 10,000 students and 850 staff, the building creates a series of social and learning engagement spaces which help foster a new type of collegiate environment between academic staff and students, facilitating mentorship and collaboration.

AECOM provided mechanical, electrical (including communications and security), fire protection services, fire engineering, hydraulics, vertical transportation, audio visual and environmentally sustainable design on the $200 million world-class learning and teaching facility.

Designed by Lyons Architects, the building has achieved a 5 Star GreenStar Education V1 design rating, with environmental features including mixed mode ventilated student break out spaces, demand driven conditioning systems, and integration into the RMIT district chilled water system.

AECOM services engineering team leader Shu-Hsin Soong said the SAB set a new benchmark in learning innovation. “This vertical campus further incorporates RMIT into Melbourne’s urban fabric, providing a new model for integrating learning, social and retail spaces in response to the ‘generation next’ student experience,” she said.

Awards

• Australian Construction Achievement Award
• Premier’s Sustainability Award for Infrastructure and Buildings
• CBRE Property Development Award
• Property Council of Australia (PCA) Innovation & Excellence Award’s “Best Public Building”

Partners:  Lyons Architects

AECOM conducted a two-year planning study that included a detailed investigation of a number of different integrated transport options, including grade separating key junctions to improve the operation of Hoddle Street, as well as opportunities to enhance the efficiency of public transport. This study represents the first study done under the Victorian Integration Act and the largest planning study ever undertaken by VicRoads.