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5 Huge projects that you definitely haven't heard of
61 Plays4 months ago
This week, Mike and Carlos talk through a few projects that have unique qualities and aren't necessarily as well known as they should be (save for one). The two discuss public perception around some of these projects, compare them to other finished pieces of infrastructure, and discuss the intended impact on the places they're being delivered in.
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Transcript
Comparing New Project to Central Line
00:00:00
Speaker
One stat I was quite surprised by was it's going to service, I think 100,000 people a day. yeah And um if you compare that to like the central line in London, the central line does 800,000. So it seems like it's, when you compare, and I know the central line, you're like, you're like sardines, right? You're getting squashed in there. It's 800,000 on one train. Yeah.
Offsite Podcast Introduction with Guest Mike
00:00:23
Speaker
yeah
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast. How are you doing, Mike? Very well, thanks, Matt. Good to be back. Good to have you back. Two weeks in a row. um I've purposely selected this room just to make you feel a bit more comfortable and at home with the... Matt, I appreciate the extra effort. That's fine. It's, five it's ah you know, anything that helps us get along. It's not actually the best picture though. It's pretty blurry, but anyway. So
Major Infrastructure Projects in Europe and Australia
00:00:59
Speaker
today we are going to be chatting through a few sort of major schemes happening across sort of Europe and Australia. um So we've tried to pick a few that maybe people haven't heard of before. People like to know about new projects and what's going on.
00:01:15
Speaker
um Everyone does get super laser focused into their own schemes, so sometimes it's good to talk about others. To any that have any sort of major milestones, new schemes are kicking off and sort of big ones that are underway. So um Mike and I have picked a couple of projects each to talk about today.
Salisbury Square Development Overview
00:01:30
Speaker
So first up, I'd like to mention the Salisbury Square development. I actually had the pleasure the other day of going to their bottoming out ceremony. It's kind of a lesser known ceremony. People normally do topping out ceremony, which is like you get to the top of the structure and everyone has a bit of a party at the top yeah um because we've we've sort of built the structure. Bottoming out as you got to the bottom, quite impressive. Bearing in mind it's, I don't know how well you know London, but Fleet Street, it's like just next to the city near kind of close to Staples Cathedral. yeah okay It's something like 18 meters deep pit.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, well like quite substantial, surrounded by buildings. So they've had to prop the whole thing. You'll see a bunch of pictures online and they've gone right down 80 meters. um So they had a bit of ah a ceremony at the bottom. um you Do it just the you do it just to try and get two parties in? So you get the top party and also the bottom. yeah Yeah, they just made up this one so they can go out for a few drinks. Yeah, absolutely. But the scheme was good. There was a few sort of speeches from people like um the Lord Mayor of London because it's quite a significant project.
00:02:42
Speaker
in terms of what it's going to cover so there's effectively three structures we sort of towers that are of each one's taller than the last it's going to have the uh it's like a flagship facility for the courts and tribunal services so i think there's 18 courtrooms and all sorts going on there yeah There's the new headquarters for the City of London Police. So anyone outside the UK, the City of London, which is like the square mile in the middle, yeah is run like either the Vatican City. It's got its own law enforcement. It's got its own everything. It's independent from sort of broader London and um yeah the boroughs around. And then a whole bunch of offices, which you kind of bet is going to be a bunch of law firms moving in there. So they're next door to where the actual courts are. So
00:03:27
Speaker
yeah It's going to be a bit of a, it's ah it's a modern facility. And they've got sort of, I think it's fraud prevention and cybercrime at its heart. So a
Salisbury Square Construction Challenges
00:03:38
Speaker
lot of modern crime, I guess. yeah and um how long huge development How long did it take to get down that far, roughly? So I think from contract start, it was something like 18 months. yeah So it took them 18 months to get to the bottom. It's the main contractor's mace. I think the subcontractor that's done the majority of the work is Kelpbray. So they've done all the sort of ground works, the muck away, the concrete and the propping. Pretty crazy. I think they peaked at 120 wagons a day. So imagine 120 lorries every day in the middle of London taking away muck that they're excavating.
00:04:15
Speaker
So like it's a serious like logistical exercise to to be able to maintain that. So yeah 18 months to the bottom and then I'm pretty sure it's like a year or something to the top. So it goes up way quicker than you go down um just because the steel fray I think one one building's concrete and the other two are steel and they'll just fly up yeah super quickly. so um Yeah, pretty cool project um right in the center of London. And um yeah, definitely sort of a modern facility. And they're sort of, I think it's called net zero as well. So they put in like ground source heat pumps and all the latest stuff to make sure that it's sort of efficient and sustainable. Very cool. I'll have to add it onto the list for a little walk around when I come to visit you guys next.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. Let's go have a look. It's just around the corner from the office. It's a nice convenient one. But yeah. So what have you got first? Mate, very
Sydney Metro Project Introduction
00:05:08
Speaker
good. Well, ah maybe I misunderstood the brief. I don't know if this one slid under the radar or not. Maybe in the UK, because we're just so far away in Oz. But I actually picked Sydney Metro, which is a small little project that's $64 billion dollars worth.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, nice ah nice project that you might not have heard of, but to be fair, I don't think people actually realise how many major schemes there are in Australia at the moment. Like if you look at the billion plus, that's the list is way bigger than here. yeah So um I think it's fair to say a lot of people won't know about this project. Yeah. And so really substantial, I think, as I was working through, there's major schemes both in Melbourne and Perth as well for there's a lot of rail work going on. And so Obviously, I guess the challenge of kind of the vast land over here is there's a lot of ground to cover to get around and so plenty of really big infrastructure projects. So this one has 113 kilometres of metro rail. They're building 46 new stations. And while the work is split up into four big packages, so there's Sydney, Metro, Northwest, West.
00:06:24
Speaker
There's the Western Sydney Airport that's getting built. So another airport that's a few billion dollars to reduce some of the load on Sydney Airport. Sydney and that golden triangle kind of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne. I think the Sydney, Melbourne pair route is one of the busiest routes internationally of any flight. And so... There was like a flight every like half an hour when I was there. It's nuts. Yeah, so I can't remember what the other ones are, but yeah, it handles a truckload of traffic through Sydney Airport. And so that Western Airport and then Parramatta, which is out in the west of Sydney, has kind of been billed as the next major kind of CBD that they're starting to set up for to kind of handle the population growth.
00:07:11
Speaker
And so those are kind of like the three big packages. The one that I want to talk about, though, was this Sydney Metro City. And so this one, Sydney, similar to Brisbane, big harbor and kind of river that runs through the middle of it. And so historically has been split by that. And so, you know, going back to like 1932 when the old Sydney Harbour Bridge went up. That's one that everybody is familiar with. But since then, there's only been one other tunnel that was put in in 1992, the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. And so this is basically the next biggest project since Sydney the Harbour Bridge to actually go and connect more tunnel work underneath the harbour.
Innovations in Sydney Metro: Driverless Trains
00:07:55
Speaker
And so once that's up, they're doing twin tunnel rails that will cross underneath the Sydney Harbour and the city. The bit that I found interesting, which I know maybe a lot of cities have these now, but they're talking about driverless trains. So with those ones set up, they'll have driverless trains running every four minutes under the harbour and under the Sydney CBD. Four minutes is impressive. um Yeah, have you ever been the DLR over in London is driverless? I can. So it's the one where if there's strikes, everyone just gets the DLR if they need to. It's like the old fad fall. Yeah, you can rely on it for that point of view. But yeah, every four minutes is crazy. That's um's impressive. And then the other bit was, I guess, going underneath the harbour, they actually had to build, so they've got, what, 16 TBM's, I'm just checking my notes, 16 TBM's that they've got running for all those different tunnels that they're building, those kind of things. But they actually had to build a specialised TBM for the particular bit under the Sydney Harbour, where they had to pull out the excavated material
00:09:03
Speaker
and turn it into a slurry to make the material easier to get out the back. So they get purpose built that for those particular twin terminals underneath the harbour. One stat I was quite surprised by was it's going to service I think 100,000 people a day. yeah and um If you compare that to like the central line in London, the central line does 800,000. So it seems like it's, when you compare, and I know the central line, you're like, you're like sardines, right? You're getting squashed in there. It's 800,000 on one train. yeah Yeah. But it seems like a small number when you compare the two, but yeah.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it's still a city where a lot of people drive all over the train, right? Yeah, I think that's the major problem with Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, probably not as bad with the tram lines running through. But yeah, public transport historically in Oz just hasn't been that strong. It's kind of everybody has a car and then a lot of people will drive. They're not especially well set up cities for bike riding and those kind of things. They're getting better. yeah But yeah, they're really trying to, I guess, over-invest in the, particularly the rail infrastructure, but then also roads and dedicated bus lanes and those kinds of things as well, I think, to try and create the magnet to maybe draw people out of the driving mentality. But it's, yeah, it's a pretty ingrained trend over in Oz. Yeah, I'd imagine it's not the same as London where having a car as a luxury, like most people will have a car if they live in the city.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty much a ah not quite a necessity, but once you get 12 kilometers out of the city, no train line within a 10 minute drive kind of thing. And you could catch the bus, but then the bus you're sitting on in amongst the same kind of traffic as the car as well. so yeah Yeah, it's just quite spread out and so is a bit more optimized for people picking their own path. And so, yeah, that the rail infrastructure and particularly the juncture points where you get to crossing the actual river is the big kind of bottleneck. There's a similar project going on in Brisbane at the moment, Cross River Rail, which you'd be familiar with.
00:11:20
Speaker
where again it's just trying to create additional pathways through the harbour because everything becomes that big bottleneck. So everything kind of compresses to one to two lanes through, which I'm imagining London with all the investment in kind of the underground and everything has kind of worked around already. Yeah, for sure. What's public perception like over there with a scheme like that? So if I think back to Crossrail here, like Crossrail opens and everyone forgot about the issues, because it's a great line. And like, it's immediately like forgiven. But if I actually remember back to during construction, it was just negativity constantly about overspend and overrun and yeah everything else. What's it like over there? The public behind these projects? Or is it the same in the media? We just don't see it.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, I definitely feel overall the infrastructure projects with particularly rail seems to be on the more positive side. There's definitely plenty of negative sentiment for tunnels with toll roads for cars, which I think have been where most of the major infrastructure investment has been, if you rewind kind of the past 10 years, there's been a bucket load of investment on yeah highways and tunnels for cars that end up being some of the best earning toll roads, I think, in the Southern Hemisphere. And so those don't go down amazingly on public perception, ah particularly when sometimes they end up busier than just going there
00:12:48
Speaker
the standard free route anyway but yeah on the rail side yeah it's definitely not as heavily politicized that if I think back to even how frequently we're having train strikes and those kind of things, it's way, way milder than anything that you guys have experienced. There was a project I was talking to in Europe the other day, and I won't mention the name because I don't think it's public information yet, but just to use the tunnel is 50 euros each way, oh which is like a hundred dollars. That's bo ah huge, right? Their justification was it's cheaper than the alternative, which was like a ferry.
00:13:25
Speaker
That's bonkers. Yeah, every car. That's some income. Yeah, that's a good little money spinner. You'd want a little spinner of caviar as you drove through almost. Yeah, yeah, yeah drinks delivered to your window. Yeah. Awesome. Not a ah not a small project. $65 billion, I think the scheme was overall. um But yeah, pretty impressive stuff. And i definitely one worth checking out. So oh you got a second one, right? I do, mate. Do you want me to just keep it local? keep Well, the flight in between is so far. So we may as well stay in Australia while we're we're on the topic. yeah ah This one's a little bit closer to home for me. So this is the Queen's Wharf project, ah which is in Brisbane. So Brisbane CBD, about 20 minutes from where I am and our five, 10 minute walk from the office where we're at in Brisbane.
00:14:20
Speaker
I didn't realize quite how big this
Queen's Wharf Project in Brisbane
00:14:22
Speaker
is. So it's obviously a massive scheme. It's been going on for a while. But yeah, right in the heart of the CBD, 26 hectare development. And so it's the biggest district development in the Southern Hemisphere. And so similar to, I guess, the Salisbury Square development that you were talking about, when you've got these big projects, and so there's a casino, a hotel, refurbishment of some government and historic buildings, but yeah, all smack bang in the middle of the CBD. Getting yeah down and getting material out and all those kinds of things is
00:15:03
Speaker
definitely a ah task. So Queen's Wharf was actually a little bit of history and to pay tribute to the mother country mate was the spot where Brisbane's initial European settlement launched. So early 1800s. So yeah, there's plenty of historical buildings there. There's heritage buildings. And then for the new breed, there's a nice new flash casino to go in as well to I know Aussies love a casino, but it makes it does make me laugh at this new like cultural hub includes a casino. it's um ah If it was big enough, it'd probably include a horse racing track as well, but I just don't think it was feasible.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, not enough space for that. I remember going to the casino in, oh, it must have been Melbourne. And it was huge. like Absolutely rammed on a Friday night. ah Yeah, I had no idea the industry was so big over there. But um yeah, so 3.7 billion. It's a serious amount of cash. um Yeah, is that is that ah is that a public project? Is it sort of is it yeah private funded? It is public. Yeah, no public, I believe. um And the reason that I thought it was worth talking about as well is it.
00:16:20
Speaker
all go along to the opening of that. So it'll be open to the public in a month and a half up here in Brisbane. And so, yeah, it's been going on for quite some time to get ready. It's all a part of redevelopment of some of these different city precincts. There's another bit over on ah the south side of the city, the other kind of waterfront precinct as well. And so I think it's all a part of the ramp up and kind of progress towards the Olympics, which I get it wrong. I think 2032.
00:16:54
Speaker
yeah okay In the UK, there's a bit of like North-South competition of making these sort of hubs. Is there a lot of competition between the big three cities in Australia to like the tourist hub or the business hub? is it Or is it quite sort of separated? Yeah, it's an interesting question. Sydney and Melbourne have always been quite competitive for that kind of best city, both best city in terms of attracting big international employers and kind of driving that economic hub. You would say Sydney is probably one, by and large, in terms of the big HQs for kind of companies and driving that economic hub. I think Melbourne's always
00:17:33
Speaker
taken the claim of being the cultural hub and definitely kind of the sporting hub in terms of AFL, footy, cricket. okay kind of They've always kind of i guess kind of been a step ahead in terms of that culture. ah I think they both trade blows, not my personal opinion. um Brisbane has never really been in contention for that and has always been a little bit of a little brother, little sister kind of thing, and has felt probably more like a big country town than a major, say, international city. And so I've definitely observed that shifting over the past five to 10 years. And so I think some of these big cornerstone investments in infrastructure, there's, again,
00:18:23
Speaker
big works going on with Brisbane airports and other international airport runway that will expand the capacity of international carriers coming in the Infrastructure upgrades like Cross River Rail and those kind of things and then these building precincts to try and make it feel like it's definitely far from feeling like a 24-7 city or a city that has the full kind of nightlife and longevity so I would say that that's Brisbane's kind of pathway is that into the Olympics and using that as kind of a trajectory to try and put itself properly on the map as an international city um to be considered. It's definitely post COVID, it's definitely been the biggest internal net migration winner.
00:19:13
Speaker
say But Melbourne obviously had some really brutal lockdowns throughout COVID. They were kind of some of the worst in the world. And so that coupled with kind of weather and coupled with the cost of living down there. Brisbane's comparably still a fair bit cheaper on property and those kind of things. And so, yeah, there was a not just Brisbane, but Brisbane and an hour north or south is the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast with beautiful beaches and a little bit more relaxed lifestyle. So at least half of the people I know in Melbourne kind of exited stage left and moved up north. And so that's definitely been a trend that's kind of continuing. So
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, it would be great if Brisbane could kind of establish itself as a legitimate third player, but with the lifestyle bent that it's middle of winter here and it's 25 degrees kind of thing. So there's definitely the the temperature that's a strong suit for it. But yeah, it hasn't really competed at the same level on the economic side or the infrastructure side to date with Sydney and Melbourne.
Brisbane's Olympic Transformation
00:20:21
Speaker
Brisbane definitely before to me felt like a much smaller city and it was more related to like, yeah, the two coasts and surfing and sun rather than like a big sort of economic hub. So I'd imagine the Olympics would change that a lot, right? And that's why they're building these cultural centers and everything else to come with it to get all eyes on Brisbane and people will realize that it's it's it's growing at pace. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Elizabeth Island Energy Hub in Belgium
00:20:47
Speaker
So next up I've gone to Belgium. There is a project called the Elizabeth Island. like There are some pretty fast wind farms um dotted around the sort of the channel and there's a huge one just off the coast of Belgium. I'm no specialist in a transmission of electricity or anything like that. they your an electrical work Do your own electrical Don't list no any advice from me on this. Just rubber shoes and gloves and then you're fine, right? So they're building an artificial island and it will basically serve as an energy hub so it can take ah power generated by these wind turbines directly onto this island that's located quite close to the farm and then that hub
00:21:28
Speaker
will have high voltage cables that they can distribute power back to mainland Belgium. And then I think also up towards Sweden, Denmark, and also over to the UK. So um it's ah it's a pretty cool scheme. the One of the main contractors on it is Demi Group. They are doing, a I guess, a methodology pretty similar to the the FEMON project up in Denmark, which is a tunnel tunnel scheme, where they are producing these huge concrete segments. floating them out to sea. see The difference being on their Fairmont project they sunk them but this one they'll float forever. all um or not they kind of They float but there is a sort of gravel base they're building at the bottom of this sort of island. So they float them out into position, link them together, build this effectively platform which will then pull the power from these wind turbines and then distribute them out to the mainland.
00:22:20
Speaker
So it's a pretty cool scheme. and Yeah, it seems pretty unique and the first of its kind ah definitely within the channel. um It's just really kicking off this year. It's a couple of billion dollars. So my why do you know do you know why they would build it out there? Is it just land? Is it such a shortage? Or I was wondering if there was anything to do with cooling, but I was presuming that they would have been sinking them. So if they're exposed or semi-exposed, is it just due to there's not enough land to do it and doing it out there is feasible or... This would have been a really good ah topic to get guests on for. Yeah, to give us a better insight. I've forgotten the climate, you're not an electrician and I also don't build offshore wind plants.
00:23:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, but my assumption is, because these wind farms, they're quite they're not like right by the coast, they are quite out um away. So to to take power all the way back to land, they go all the way back up north to the sort of northern countries in Western Europe and the UK, it seems like a bit of a more well positioned hub. Yeah, you have like the shortest distance that you're traveling. But then also, there's a lot of complexity to take hybrid voltage cables onto land. So you're remov you're removing all of that. You're not having any sort of ah logistical problems with building something onshore, which are going to disrupt the local humidity. So it kind of makes a lot of sense. Pretty rough, that part of the ah the channel. So yeah, it's definitely going to be exposed.
00:23:55
Speaker
You'd assume they've worked that out. I'm not going to try and pretend to shed some light on it in terms of how it will actually deal with that. But there's obviously a huge driver with wind in this region, um loads wind farms across the UK. I think the UK is 26% or something like that wind energy. um so we talk I was talking with them one of the guys in our team today because it definitely seems like there's some more wind farm work coming through Australia now and a bunch of major contractors that are starting to not diversify their building mix, but definitely add in more components of obviously different renewables and wind definitely being a part of it. I think it was, was it Vestas, the Danish company that, yeah, I think you've done some work with them. I think they were producing some of the turbines that we're looking at a couple of projects over here.
00:24:48
Speaker
There's these huge regions in Australia that they've nominated for wind, right? yeah I can't remember the name of them now. But yeah, that's one of the biggest producer of turbines themselves. yeah there's The European Union have these pretty substantial targets for ah climate targets for 2030 and 2050. So I think this is all in the build up to that. so um Yeah, pretty mega scheme. Demi
Sindala Island and Saudi Arabia's Vision Fund
00:25:10
Speaker
Group is one of the two JV partners who also work on Fairmont. So I think they are the specialist in terms of these concrete segments. yeah um And ah it's almost like a factory style output and then tugging them into place and shipping them out, connecting together. So um yeah, really interesting project. Yeah, very cool.
00:25:29
Speaker
final one I have a bit of a bonus and the reason I'm bringing this up is you and Jason recorded an episode um about some of the Saudi projects and I think there was skepticism about whether they'd be completed. That might have been my twin. I don't know if that was actually me. I know he looks like me and sounds like me but it's So up there's a there's a project called Sindala and you know to buy they've got like the palm of the world islands it's kind of now these own version of that yeah um so it's it's like a luxury island um there's like four seasons hotel there's a marina there's golf courses so
00:26:08
Speaker
pretty much ker catering for the super rich. And it's just south of where the line starts on the coast. yeah So it's it's part of that overall sort of, I think they call it the Vision Fund or whatever that was called, but yeah part of that big tourist. And the end that they're starting the line, not the end that they're finishing the line, I presume. The finish is meant to be by the mountains where the ski resort is. yeah um Albeit there is some news at the moment on how far that line will go. So a TVC on that front. um Although there was a post this morning for the CEO of NEOM. And the post actually said NEOM Israel and had a picture ah of the works going ahead. So I think they're very aware of ah the skepticism.
Phased Project Completions in Saudi Arabia
00:26:54
Speaker
But yeah, this island is actually going to open this year.
00:26:57
Speaker
yeah not So um it looks pretty cool. You can see pictures online of it actually coming to shape. Looks super luxury. It's like a blue lagoon style water. yeah So um yeah, it's ah is it actually being grilled, which is good to see. Very cool. And um yeah, looking pretty good. That's nice. yeah though There are definitely some serious size projects that are getting out of the blocks over there for sure. so yeah Aside from the line, there's plenty of yeah big stuff getting built. so I think that'll also just build a bit of momentum for them right as they're getting some runs on the board and some wins with things coming to completion. Yeah, 100%. I think by actually getting things open,
00:27:41
Speaker
going to validate this tourist industry that they're trying to build. yeah Like if you imagine you opened everything and like the same year this like grand reveal but then it's like a bit of a ghost town. I think building the excitement as you go you can imagine if the rumours are true on the line that they're going to potentially shorten its length. If they're opening at phases you can sort of almost work to capacity knowing that it's going to be this successful project rather than trying to do too much at one time. So yeah, I think it'd be good to see see it working on some of these earlier schemes to validate the rest, which I'm sure would give them a bit of comfort around the amount of money they're spending. Yeah, big start. Good stuff. That's right. I'm pretty sure that's all we got time for. Thank you very much, Mike, for filling in for Jason.
00:28:28
Speaker
Awesome, mate. Good fun as always. Thank you. Before we head out, I mentioned this last week, but we would love to hear from you. um We have got a short survey um that we'd love to get your input on in terms of what topics we might sort of tuck into in the future. So there will be a survey link in the show notes. Please do let us know what you'd like to hear or ah hear about and it will inform future episodes. So as always, thank you very much for listening and excited to hear what you think.