Improving rail access at the Port of Melbourne
As part of their 2050 Port Development Strategy to define critical infrastructure needs and support the economic growth of Victoria, the Port of Melbourne initiated the Port Rail Transformation Project (PRTP) to improve rail freight access across the Australian state. Spanning more than 500 hectares of land at the mouth of the Yarra River, the Port of Melbourne handles about a third of Australia’s container trade. The AUD 125 million railway initiative aims to facilitate and increase rail-road share. It will enable more containers to be moved by rail more efficiently by increasing rail terminal capacity and improving rail terminal operations at the port. When complete, PRTP will provide a rail solution to meet the needs of a growing port and reduce truck movements across Victoria, particularly in Melbourne’s inner western suburbs. “It’s about taking more trucks off inner-city roads and putting more containers on trains destined for outer-suburban logistics terminals,” said Matthew Brooks, senior project manager of port rail infrastructure at Port of Melbourne. With more than 130 years of technical excellence in transport infrastructure, WSP was selected as part of an alliance with the contractor and client to provide design consultancy services for the project. The scope of their responsibilities included designing and building a new rail terminal interfacing with one of the container terminals, as well as upgrading existing lines and connections to improve access and provide operational flexibility for all trains accessing the port. To optimise design and efficiently meet the Australian community’s needs for mobility, connectivity, sustainability, and resilience, WSP set out to digitalise workflows and information management across the three organisations working on the PRTP. A Need for a Connected Digital Environment With approximately 250 multidisciplinary project team members spread across three organisations, the project presented information management and coordination challenges, compounded by a […]