Australian tunnelling project wins project of the year at international awards

The joint venture on an Australian major project has won the Major Project of the Year category at the ITA Tunnelling Awards 2020.

John Holland, CBP and Ghella took on the tunnelling and station excavation works, as a joint venture, for the Sydney Metro City and South West project and have been awarded Major Project of the Year.

The international ITA Tunnelling and Underground Space Awards has been running since 2015 and rewards the most ground-breaking innovation and outstanding projects in tunnelling and underground space use.

Despite challenges with running events in 2020, the ITA awards went virtual and recieved 52 entries from 23 countries across the globe.

To qualify for Major Project of the Year, the total project cost had to be in excess of 500 million euro.

Sydney Metro City and Southwest is Australia’s first project to have five tunnel boring machine’s simultaneously building tunnels under Sydney and the Sydney Harbour.

The ITS lists many achievements of the Sydney Metro Project including; the construction of two dives and permanent portal structures, three underground mined stations, one crossover cavern, three open station boxes, three shafts and one tanked station box structure.

Between Chatswood and Marrickville the twin 15.5 kilometre tunnels were constructed with 57 cross cross passages.

Sydney Metro and its Joint Venture contractors were up against the Jinjiazhuang Spiral tunnel project of Yanqing to Chongli expressway in China and Ryfast – Construction of the world’s longest sub-sea road tunnel in Norway.