As the third stage of Australia’s largest public transport project, Sydney Metro West will connect Parramatta and Sydney’s CBD. It will become the fastest, easiest and most reliable way to travel between the two locations. Providing increased accessibility for customers, the project includes proposed stations at Westmead, North Strathfield (adjacent to the existing suburban station on the T1 Northern Line), Burwood North, Five Dock, the Bays and the Sydney CBD.
WSP was engaged to provide scoping and definition design to support the final business-case development of Sydney Metro West. We are delivering this work as part of the Central City Metro team, together with AECOM, Cox, Farrells and Woods Bagot supported by the Customer Experience Company, and Balarinji.
Our team provided services for engineering and rail systems, including:
- Civil, structural, geotechnical, mechanical and electrical engineering
- Sustainability
- Architectural and heritage design.
Championing a Digital Approach
WSP Create, the Customer Connectivity tool and Development Application (DA Bot) were some of the key tools used for design on the project. The first of these, WSP Create, served as a centralized digital data environment, hosting real-time information in a secure, categorized way. It was part of the digital engineering approach originally developed for Sydney Metro City and Southwest, and was awarded the 2017 Consult Australia Technological Innovation award.
Meanwhile, the Customer Connectivity tool allows for a rapid new method of testing and designing railway alignments for optimal customer and community benefit. It uses open-source transport data to inform high-level transport planning decisions regarding placement and integration of new rail infrastructure into the existing public transport network. It also keeps customers at the centre of all transport planning decisions and provides a way to measure customer outcomes much earlier in the design process. With the tool, the client has been able to quantify the benefit of different design options and support a much more agile development cycle.
The final tool, the DA Bot, leveraged technology to screen Development Applications in the immediate environment surrounding the project. The automated system drastically reduced the time and cost taken to search through DA's. This allows for high risk developments to be identified as soon as they are submitted for planning approvals.