Another City Rail Link milestone has been reached – the first concrete has been poured for the CRL tunnel box in Albert Street.

Concrete pouring

The preparation work started exactly two years ago. It's taken the workers approximately 501,000 hours to get to this point.

So far, 30,000 cubic metres of soil and rock have been removed and filled up a double trailer-truck 1866 times.

It also required about 8km of utility piping to be moved or suspended above the trench, and the main stormwater line, 2m in diameter, to be broken out and re-bored approximately 10m sideways to the east. This is the reason a new 516m stormwater pipe was installed from Wellesley to Swanson streets.

This first concrete pour was in the section beside the Auckland District Court and the Wyndham Street viewing platform at a depth of 18m.

The pour took almost 30 cubic metres of concrete pumped through 56m of concrete hose all the way down to the base of the excavation. The job took four hours from start to finish.

This first concrete pour is the "blinding layer" to form a flat and smooth layer for the next layer above it, which is the waterproofing membrane.

Alain Giauque, Connectus Project Engineer, says, "This is the very first stage of the tunnel box construction and the team did a great job with the preparation works before pouring and the works during the pour."