FR2 – InfrastructureThe package
SMP4 — Southwest Metro Upgrade Package 4 covers station works at Canterbury, Marrickville and Sydenham on the Southwest Metro Upgrade, delivered by HSEJV — the joint venture between Haslin Constructions and Stephen Edwards Constructions. FR2 supported the joint venture in a planning, programming and commercial role, including Project Planning and Control (PPC).
The Southwest Metro Upgrade converts the existing suburban line between Sydenham and Bankstown to metro standards. Existing stations have to be brought up to the standards a driverless metro service requires — platform geometry and interface works, accessibility, canopies, services and precinct works — while the corridor itself stays in service for as long as possible. Package 4 groups three of those stations under a single contract.
Why it is a planning problem
Three stations in one package is not three separate jobs. They share a delivery team, a plant fleet, a supply chain and, critically, the same finite set of access opportunities in the corridor. Substantive work happens inside booked possessions and shutdowns; between them the site is constrained and productivity is low. That makes the programme the governing document rather than a reporting artefact:
- Possession-driven sequencing — planning backwards from each access window and protecting the path of work that feeds it.
- Resource contention across three sites — supervision, cranes and trades cannot be in two stations at once, so the schedule has to resolve the clash before the site does.
- Float where it matters — identifying early where a slip costs days and where it costs an entire access opportunity.
- An evidenced record — keeping progress, notices and delay events recorded well enough that time and cost positions can be argued from the contemporaneous record.
What FR2 did
- Scheduling — baseline development and critical-path programme maintenance across the three station sites.
- Live programme management and Project Planning and Control (PPC) — progress capture, forecasting and reporting through delivery.
- Construction planning — methodology and staging built around the possession strategy rather than fitted to it afterwards.
- Extension of time support — delay analysis and claim development from the contemporaneous record.
- Commercial management support alongside the programme work.