Victoria St Water Main Renewal

Melbourne, Vic

Project Duration

January 2022 to February 2024

Client

Greater Western Water

Project Value

$ 21m

The Victoria Street Water Main Renewal project involves the design and construction of a 3.5km water main to renew a 140+ year old DN450 main along Victoria St and Howard St. This is a vital project to renew this aging and essential infrastructure to prevent against water loss, leaks and in the worst case, major bursts, across the water distribution network.

The scope of work includes:

Open cut trenching and laying 1.4km of DN600 mild steel pipe
Slip-lining 1.7km of OD400 HDPE pipe through existing DN450 cast iron pipe
Slip-lining 300m of OD355 HDPE pipe through existing DN400 cast iron pipe
30+ cross connections from pipeline into existing water distribution network
Installation of multiple air valves & scours
Decommissioning 1.4km of DN450 cast iron pipe

key challenges

Traffic along Victoria St is extremely busy, therefore works can only be completed at night efficiently. Night works proved challenging in many aspects such as restricted working hours, logistics, fatigue and impacts on residents.
Due to the location of works, there are vast number of existing services from many different authorities that needed to be considered which proved difficult with design and construction, this
also includes obtaining permits and approvals. Furthermore, storage space and accessibility at times were another challenging aspect.
The complexity of connections to the existing water infrastructure and network needed to be planned carefully to minimise disruption to existing customers.

key innovations & outcomes

Stakeholder engagement was a critical component of this project. A software tool, Consultation Manager, was used to record all resident and stakeholder interactions to keep track of communication history, obtain contact information and determine trends in these
interactions. By the end of the project, more than 1,500 interactions were recorded.
A dedicated Stakeholder Engagement Officer was bought on full time to the project to liaise directly with the thousands of residents and any concerns or issues they may have had. This included apartment building complexes and businesses.
Careful planning regarding construction sequences to manage the complexities of shutdowns and outages in the water distribution network was essential in the successful delivery of this project.
Exceptional workmanship by an experienced construction crew and consistent QA monitoring ensured a very high level of quality was delivered throughout the project. Consistent crew with managing fatigue during year plus of night works is commendable.
Utilising Horizontal Directional Drilling to slip-line 300-400m of HDPE pipe through existing main was a successful approach.