Western Sydney Airport Bulk Earthworks – WSABE – is the largest civil earthmoving project in Australia.
It includes the excavation, movement, and placement of approximately 25 million cubic metres of material to support construction of the major elements of the airport, including the runway and passenger terminal.
The project is being delivered via a joint venture between CPB Contractors and ACCIONA.
Work started in 2019 and is scheduled for completion later this year.
In the meantime, the WSABE Project, as it is known, has won a major international award.
It took out the International Environmental Excellence Award at the International Erosion Control Association’s (IECA) 50th annual conference and expo in Minneapolis, USA.
IECA recognised the joint venture’s “outstanding efforts to work through WSABE’s significant environmental challenges and constraints’’, which have come due to the size and scale of the project.
The joint venture companies also won the award because they developed innovative and dynamic tools and processes to effectively manage the environmental risks involved, including:
• Design and establishment of 16 temporary basins to prevent sedimentation in the surrounding waterways and to protect aquatic life. These basins have the capacity to retain over 400 megalitres of water;
• Transitioning from 16 temporary sediment basins and catchments to four permanent basins;
• Monthly sediment basin catchment mapping and volume reporting completed by aerial surveys, an important process to monitor the effectiveness of controls as earthworks progresses at a rate of approximately one million cubic meters of dirt moved every month;
• Sediment basin treatment procedures and dewatering logistics to handle the vast quantities of water collected – up to 400 megalitres every rain event;
• Sustainable management of silt from basins;
• 99 percent of water used for dust suppression and construction purposes has been obtained from recycled sources;
• Decommissioning of 157 farm dams prior to earthworks or prior to transitioning farm dams to sediment retention structures. The decommissioning process first required all aquatic life to be relocated.
