Photo / Wetransfer
Eight years ago, City Rail Link (CRL) was established to deliver a world-class underground railway for Auckland’s future.
Ambitious and visionary, a completed City Rail Link will be the “missing link” in Auckland’s rail network, unlocking travel benefits exactly as the Auckland Harbour Bridge did for roads 66 years ago.
We’re in the final straight now, but it’s a very long straight ahead of us. And we know from overseas experience that this is the trickiest part of the ‘game’.
We now have a big push, which includes finishing 9000-plus individual tests on all the systems installed to make CRL safe to use so that we can hand over a railway line that will revolutionise Auckland travel and, at the same time, deliver far-reaching benefits for the rest of the country.”
CRL is New Zealand’s largest transport infrastructure project. Twin concrete tunnels curve their way deep below central Auckland for 3.45 kilometres – the country’s first underground railway – connecting directly Auckland’s main, and currently dead-end, Waitematā (Britomart) Terminus with Maungawhau (Mt Eden) Station on the Western/North Auckland line. The project includes two central city underground stations – Te Waihorotiu and Karanga-a-Hape.
Besides building for Auckland’s growth and prosperity, CRL recognised back in July 2017 an additional responsibility – acknowledgement that with CRL’s huge scale and complexities came an obligation to hold up the project as an exemplar and lift the bar for the wider construction industry.
Nothing of CRL’s size had been undertaken in New Zealand before, certainly not in the middle of a busy and growing city.
CRL’s benefits for Auckland when it opens in 2026 are enormous, but the bar we set higher for innovation, job skills, worker health and safety, protecting the environment and a rewarding partnership with Māori are also legacies that will endure for generations of New Zealanders.
Ambition and the vision are not new. Putting Auckland rail underground was first suggested around 100 years ago. Auckland Council and its transport arm, Auckland Transport, began CRL’s initial construction in 2015. When the Government stepped in as a joint funder with Auckland Council, they set up CRL as a Crown entity with an independent chairman and board.
CRL Ltd’s immediate challenges extended well beyond its building sites.
Accelerating CRL’s works programme coincided with an aggressive construction boom – a “forest” of around 100 cranes crowded Auckland’s skyline; Fletchers withdrew as a main bidder; across the Tasman, RCR Tomlinson, part of the consortium to deliver CRL’s rail systems such as power and signalling, collapsed.
Difficulty, however, turned quickly to opportunity. CRL Ltd folded the separate rail systems contract into the station and tunnels contract – known now as C3 – and decided that a single Alliance, with its greater design, delivery, innovation and flexibility benefits, would deliver all three C3 components.
The project’s earlier C1 and C2 contracts, meanwhile, celebrated two big milestones: the start of cut and cover trenching in lower Albert St and 14,000 tonnes of the heritage-listed Chief Post Office – home to Waitematā station – was successfully, and delicately, lifted onto temporary foundations without a single crack to the building so tunnels could be built in its basement.
The construction timetable ramped up in 2019.
CRL reviewed two bids for C3 from New Zealand and international design and construct companies. The contract was won by Link Alliance led by the French firm Vinci Construction Grands Projects SAS, and including Downer, Soletanche Bachy, WSP, AECOM, Tonkin+Taylor – and CRL. It was tasked with boring the remaining sections of tunnel, building Te Waihorotiu and Karanga-a-Hape stations, redeveloping Maungawhau station and leading installation of the many systems needed to operate a completed CRL safely.
C3’s decision followed agreement by the Government and Auckland Council to increase CRL funding by $1 billion to $4.4b after two independent reviews of project costs, and, with a further focus on Auckland’s future, a decision to extend station platforms for longer nine-car trains and future-proofing for platform screen doors.
With the ink barely dry on the C3 contract work at Te Waihorotiu, Karanga-a-Hape and Maungawhau began almost immediately, and planning for an innovative tunnel boring machine started.
Excluding those employed on CRL-related work off-site, Link Alliance would employ at peak construction more than 2000 people representing 64 nationalities.
All our sites have been great, vibrant communities – some of our people have left homes in troubled parts of the world to come here and build CRL for New Zealand.
Over the years, more than 12,000 people – staff and subbies – have been inducted on to CRL sites and completed almost 22 million hours of work and still counting.
Covid overshadowed CRL construction in 2020. Sites were shut initially for four weeks. The Alliance model did provide the agility to respond effectively with changes to work hours and shifts, health initiatives to keep workers safe, and to continue critical design and planning work from home.
Nevertheless, by the time the pandemic had passed, CRL had lost an unprecedented 230 days because of lockdowns and restricted working conditions. The pandemic also disrupted supply chains, forced up prices, created access issues for overseas workers. It was the primary reason for another $1b injection of funds – there was also funding for additional scope, too.
There was, however, one thing that not even a worldwide pandemic could stop – CRL’s state-of-the-art tunnel boring machine (TBM).
Following mining tradition, the TBM was given the name of a notable woman – after a public vote, CRL honoured Dame Whina Cooper, the Māori lands and social champion. Cooper was responsible for driving the two tunnels between Maungawhau and Te Waihorotiu. Even during lockdowns progress continued – a skeleton crew kept Cooper and its 7.15-metre-wide cutter head moving forward slowly to prevent the earth settling and trapping the TBM.
Mission accomplished for Cooper happened in September 2022 with its second breakthrough at Te Waihorotiu. During 13 months, it removed 260,000 tonnes of spoil and lined the tunnels with 2118 concrete rings, clearing the way for construction sites to transform into a railway ready for the fit-out of tracks and systems.
Underpinning CRL’s construction was a set of core values that helped reshape the delivery of large-scale projects.
Even before CRL took its first bite of Auckland’s volcanic soil, it broke new ground with a radical initiative – establishing a partnership directly with Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland Māori.
Eight iwi are represented on CRL’s Mana Whenua Forum – a proactive, meaningful and rewarding collaboration strengthening CRL’s design, employment, environment and sustainability goals, procurement policies and worker support and wellbeing.
Notable gains from the relationship include opening employment opportunities for young Māori and Pasifika with an extensive on-site training and mentoring programme that boosted the pool of qualified workers for the project and the wider industry; winning international recognition for the cultural design of CRL stations; supporting health and wellbeing programmes for workers.
What seemed a radical idea at the time has now become “normal” practice in our industry.
Setting new boundaries did not stop there.
Health and safety have been a critical objective from the start of construction when the New Zealand infrastructure industry was not set up for international project safety standards.
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Safety requirements matched an ever-changing cycle of risk management as the project’s stages shifted from demolition, utilities upgrades, civils works, tunnelling, working under mining regulations, constructing buildings and streetscapes, fitting the project out with architectural and rail systems, and multiple energisations in the stations and tunnels.
Initiatives range from the basics – insisting that hard-hats and other protective gear are always worn, using toolbox and start-up meetings to educate, formatting strict health guidelines to keep sites open, and training exercises with emergency services that reflected CRL’s changing landscape.
CRL Ltd and Link Alliance believe strong leadership and embedding the right structures and processes has paid off. With around 22 million work hours recorded, the C3 contract reports two serious accidents requiring hospital stays.
CRL’s health and safety success has seen other big projects in Canada and Australia seek out our processes which the Link Alliance freely provided to help ensure workers everywhere get home safely to their loved ones.
Sustainability and environmental protection have been project cornerstones with CRL making industry-leading changes a ‘business-as-usual’ function.
Our contractors were challenged to think not only about cost and programme, but resource efficiency as well and that’s paid off handsomely.
Concrete and cement have a heavy carbon footprint. CRL aimed to reduce its use in the 230,000m3 of concrete it needed using fly ash as a cement replacement. On average, the amount of fly ash used in the main stations and tunnels was 29.3% – a phenomenal achievement given supply chain challenges and a Concrete NZ report stating that 3.7% was the industry average. Other numbers add up to impressive outcomes, too: 95% of construction and demolition waste diverted away from landfill sites; over 77% of materials carbon savings made by replacing cement with fly ash in concrete; socially, contracts worth more than $146m were spent with Māori and Pasifika businesses and over 350 secondary school students toured CRL sites to learn about infrastructure careers.
CRL was one of the first in New Zealand to go for Infrastructure Sustainability Certification through the Australian-based Infrastructure Sustainability Council. With five of six ratings completed to date the project has been ranked as
Excellent and Leading, the highest levels achievable.
Another environmental dividend will come too, when CRL opens and improved train services will encourage people to leave cars at home, easing pressure on roads for those who need to use them.
Lifting the historic Chief Post Office onto its temporary foundations set new boundaries for the way complicated construction is completed successfully.
Two years of meticulous planning was supported by technical innovation that included the design of a low headroom hydro fraise (reverse circulation rig) able to work in the cramped basement and 50mm high strength steel reinforcing bars required for new foundations manufactured in New Zealand for the first time.
The CPO is now supported securely on new foundations that include diaphragm (D) walls sunk 20m below ground, new foundation columns, cross beams and the tunnel boxes themselves.
Shifting the CPO reflects a bold and extraordinary “can do” attitude that gives the wider infrastructure industry confidence to tackle complex challenges. (CRL’s C3 Contract was signed in the CPO while it was perched on its temporary supports.)
Along with the gains, CRL has tackled many challenges while building in the heart of a bustling city.
Delays caused by the pandemic, the weather, and other organisations taking advantage of CRL work to undertake their own required works contributed to criticism being levelled at the project by commercial neighbours impacted by construction.
Importantly, the project committed to maintaining strong communication channels – not only to inform but to listen, too – so that neighbours could plan ahead for CRL work. While restricted at times, the project maintained pedestrian and vehicle access around sites. Business advice and limited financial support was available through Link Alliance’s Small Business Support programme. In 2021, CRL began administering a $12 million Targeted Hardship Fund established by CRL’s sponsors, the Government and Auckland Council, to support those small businesses worst impacted by disruption from CRL works.
With heavy civil engineering works now complete, CRL Ltd and the Link Alliance recognise that finishing the job is not something they can do alone.
The project works collaboratively with the combined expertise of Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and KiwiRail on the installation and commissioning of systems to ensure CRL merges successfully and safely into Auckland’s wider rail network.
The task is huge. Building CRL is a game of two halves – in the first half we tackled heavy construction, in the second its installation, testing and commissioning all the systems needed to operate the tunnel safely.
Although we’re ticking off milestone after milestone such as the start of train testing, lessons learned from overseas tell us the risks, challenges and complexities stay with us as we progress further.
By the time we’re ready to hand over to Auckland Transport and KiwiRail we will have to complete 9000-plus individual tests on the various systems needed to operate CRL safely – systems such as ventilation, heating, lighting, fire emergency, security, and communications.
All those systems are being tested and tested again to make sure they do the job they are designed for – keeping everyone safe. It’s hard, meticulous, necessary work.”
With the countdown to practical completion at the end of that long home straight well under way, CRL already has much to be proud of.
Our people have and continue to demonstrate the very best in outstanding teamwork, collaboration and groundbreaking innovation and design – when our work is finally done, the very values we set out to achieve from day one will leave both Auckland, and New Zealand, as better places.
63% of commuters changed travel habits due to smart city initiative.