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Construction Tetris – A Game Coming To an Urban Area Near You
When you look at the projects that are currently being rolled out in urban areas, it is hard not to think of the game Tetris, as you are challenged to fit a shape into an ever decreasing space under the pressure of time.
Off the top of our heads at Civil Project Partners, we can think of a few projects that fit into this area:
- Brisbane’s Indooroopilly roundabout
- Brisbane’s Northern Transit Way
- Brisbane’s Centenary Highway Bridge Duplication
- Brisbane’s Cross River Rail
- Melbourne Level Crossing Program
- Sydney’s WestConnex
- Sydney Metro
- Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel
- Gold Coast Light Rail
- Perth’s Metronet
Each project has a number of things in common:
- They are all to be delivered in highly complex urban environments, complete with high volumes of exiting traffic, established businesses and communities in their vicinity, and a wealth of PUP and existing infrastructure to manage
- They are fixing one of two problems; a current burning issue or improving future capacity.
- They all carry a significant investment
- Each project is extremely high profile, with supporters and detractors monitoring every stage
- Each one is high risk, potentially the sort of project that gives a CEO many sleepless nights
In all honesty, they are going to be highly challenging projects to deliver. But in an urbanised nation, where over 66% of people live in one of the nation’s eight state capitals, they are the types of projects that will only be more and more prevalent as our cities become more densely populated.
That means how we plan to deliver such projects becomes the key factor determining success or failure; not for the project, but for the contractor’s profitability.
Over the next series of blogs, we’re going to look at the challenges of construction Tetris, how we can complete projects in challenging environments.