We finished piling works at our construction site on the east side of Greensborough Road in Watsonia. Four giant piling rigs installed almost 400 holes to form the foundations of the 40m deep, 200m long tunnel boring machine (TBM) launch area.

Piling is the process of constructing large posts in the ground to provide a solid foundation to a structure.

A pile is formed by drilling a large deep hole into the ground, followed by a reinforced steel cage that’s then filled with concrete. After all the piles are dug and set, a concrete beam is poured at the top to connect them all, adding further support to the structure before we begin major excavation of the area.

This Piling around the Watsonia Box site was a crucial step in launching TBMs ‘Zelda’ and ‘Gillian’ in 2024.

Around 7400 cubic metres of concrete were used for the launch box piles alone. If you stacked each pile end to end, it would be almost 7.2km long.