Gold Coast Light Rail

Urban Innovation Right on Track

Gold Coast Rapid Transit -Light Rail Stage 1

The Gold Coast Light Rail project was completed in 2014 as part of a government plan to ease traffic congestion by providing a light-rail corridor from Helensvale to Coolangatta.

McConnell Dowell was the main design and construction contractor within GoldLinQ, the consortium engaged to finance, design, build, operate and maintain the network for 18 years.

Earl Alcon was McConnell Dowell’s Section Manager/Senior Project Engineer for this first stage. The project has been recognised as one of the Top 10 most innovative urban mobility projects by Infrastructure 100: World Cities Edition (source: McConnell Dowell).

Among its features, Stage 1 consisted of 13 kilometres of light rail, including 26,700m of rail laid end to end and precision aligned within 2mm; 16 light-rail stations, including one sub-surface station; six bridge/viaduct structures, totalling more than 1500m in length; and a state-of-the-art tram depot and control centre.

As Senior Engineer, Earl Alcon was responsible for $140  million of construction works, and managing and motivating a team of more than 20 engineering, commercial and supervisory staff. He was tasked with the delivery of up to 8km (of 13km) of the project alignment through Main Beach, Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach, which included the construction of four bridges (bored piles with Super-Ts and driven piles with box girders), 15 retaining walls (RSS, L-walls, CFA, contiguous piling and steel sheet piling), 5km of underground stormwater drainage pipes, 100km of underground track system services conduits, and 50,000m2 of asphalt concrete pavements.

Construction was through dense commercial, retail, recreational and tourist areas, as well as on and adjacent to the Gold Coast Highway and Nerang River Bridge. Works included deep excavations within a complex existing underground service network, in sand and tidal environments. Bridge works were via the use of barges that required precise positioning to ensure the marine traffic was maintained.

Earl’s responsibilities included:

• Managing relationships and liaising with the client, state and local governments, councils and agencies (including their affiliated groups such as Gold Coast Tourism), emergency services, residents, land owners, and business groups and tenants.
• Successful management and coordination of construction works in collaboration with the Gold Coast V8 Supercars Event (GC600). This involved detailed planning up to eight months before the annual event in regard to traffic and stakeholder  management. This highly publicised event was subject to constant media scrutiny and required due diligence to be exercised.
• Lead engineer for coordinating with other external construction projects on and adjacent to the project corridor.
• Lead engineer for coordinating the interface works between the multiple disciplines of the light-rail project (comprising of Civil, Structures, Rail, Buildings and Underground Services/Utilities teams).
• Contingency planning and resolution of complex design, logistical, constructability and stakeholder challenges.
• Preparation of tender documents and the execution and administration of sub-contracts.
• Monthly forecasting of direct and indirect project costs, variance analysis of forecast to actual spends, including assisting with monthly reports.
• Managing the preparation of short-term and long-term construction programs on Primavera P6.
• Interim Manager for Project Risks (including tender, design, construction and HSE).