Development on Brisbane’s $3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf has commenced and approximately 2,000 job opportunities for suppliers, subcontractors and tradies have opened up.
According to Tourism Industry Development Minister Kate Jones, construction is now underway on a 172-metre diaphragm wall - a concrete wall that will serve as a watertight underground barrier between the Brisbane River and the Queen’s Wharf basement. Ms Jones added that the beginning of works coincided with the search for workers to deliver the project.
“Workers will excavate more than 450,000 cubic metres of material over the next 15 months to create a five-level basement for thousands of car parks at Queen’s Wharf.
“As the project moves towards peak construction demand, we’ll be recruiting hundreds more construction workers to deliver Queen’s Wharf,” Ms Jones said.
Ms Jones also said that businesses and tradespeople who are interested in working on the project can register their interest online at the Queen’s Wharf website.
One of Destination Brisbane Consortium’s contractors, Multiplex, is set to advertise a range of work opportunities in the coming days. This will include fields such as painting, steel work, glazing, metalwork, carpentry, roofing and hardware supply.
Destination Brisbane Consortium Project Director Simon Crooks said that the development’s diaphragm wall in an engineering feat that is not common in Brisbane. Building the diaphragm will use more than 2,500 cubic metres of concrete, which is enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
“The wall will have 28 panels running along the inside of Queens Wharf Road to Margaret Street to provide a watertight barrier.
“The 28 vertical panels are 800mm wide and are between 2 metres and 7.2 metres in length,” Mr Crooks said.
For the construction of the diaphragm wall, a guide wall is going to be dug, then a narrow vertical trench is going to be excavated and filled with bentonite slurry - a natural occurring clay. Afterwards, a steel reinforcement cage weighing up to 6 tonnes and more than 20 metres in lengths is going to be craned into the trench, which will then be filled with concrete to create the panels.
The bentonite slurry used for the diaphragms are going to be recycled and stored to be used during the works on the large yellow and blue towers along Queens Wharf Road.
The diaphragm wall is expected to take up to three months to complete. The Queen’s Wharf integrated resort is projected to open in 2022.
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