View this email in your browser 12 June 2020 Artist's impression of Aotea Station's Wellesley Street West entrance building.  Tēnā koutou katoa  We hope that your June is off to an encouraging and hopeful start. The Aotea Station team are now fully back working either in the office or on site. It's been a busy start to the month with our first station pile, utility works progressing well, our main crew compound fully operational - not to mention more archaeological discoveries! We continue to be aware of the impact COVID-19 has had on the city centre, and all our crews are proactively supporting many nearby businesses.  Thank you to our neighbours who often demonstrate such understanding and support to our crews, as we build this legacy infrastructure project that will transform how we live and work in our amazing city.  Hei konā mai The Aotea Station team First station pile milestone reached! A significant milestone was achieved last week with the beginning of station piling. Piles are vertical concrete columns that go deep into the ground forming the support structure for the perimeter walls of the underground station and tunnels. When our piling rig breaks the ground, soil is excavated, and a pile casing (metal support structure) put in place. When the desired depth is reached, a reinforcement cage is placed into the hole and concrete is poured in. All piles are joined together at the top by a capping beam. Aotea Station will have over 400 piles, each around twenty metres deep and one metre in diameter. Piling in action at the Albert Street / Kingston Street intersection.  Complex gas main diversion success Below ground lies tens of thousands of metres of pipes that carry utilities essential for our city centre to function. Many of these utilities need to be relocated before Aotea Station construction begins. One of the more complex diversions of the project has been a gas main that was suspended from the Crowne Plaza Hotel's airbridge - this needed to be safely relocated to the service lane beneath. Most utilities are well-mapped but this is not always the case. Our site engineer working on this relocation Abhi Amin commented that “there was a map alright but what it was telling us and what we actually discovered were two very different things"!   Tony Rose, Director of Colwall Property Investment Ltd which owns the Crowne Plaza complex commended Link Alliance's communications during the works, which enabled business operations to continue with minimal impact. Abhi Amin, Utilities Site Engineer Link Alliance and Tony Rose, Director Colwall Property just before the final moment when the gas main was successfully cut over. Link Alliance supports local cafes Just in time for winter, our main site compound is now fully operational. Four months in the making, this dome-covered area provides a place for up to around three hundred of our crew members to eat, rest and wash. Site offices and crew briefing areas are also here. To mark the occasion and to support local businesses, our crews were treated to “Donuts in the Dome”, provided by local cafes Greedy Guts and Peppers. Dale Burtenshaw, Deputy Director, Link Alliance joined for the morning tea where he mentioned some positive feedback he'd received from one of Aotea Station's neighbours, who was impressed with the way in which the team had restarted works in such a clean and safe way.   Aotea Station hosts Mana Whenua hui This month Aotea Station hosted City Rail Link Ltd's Mana Whenua Forum. These regular hui are an opportunity for the project and Mana Whenua to come together to discuss design, consents, sustainability and kaitiakitanga as well as receive updates on project construction.  The Forum aims to develop practical measures to give effect to the principles in the Urban Design Delivery Work Plans and offers input into the design of all City Rail Link stations. CRL Ltd and Mana Whenua also work collaboratively around built heritage and archaeological matters. This month’s hui at Aotea included a karakia, mihi, and site walkover to coincide with the arrival of Aotea Station's piling rig.  Matt Sinclair, Aotea Station Manager, Kingi Makoare (Ngāti Whātua o Ōrakei) and Gabriel Kirkwood (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki) take a moment to mark the arrival of the station piling rig.  Bringing Auckland's past to life Throughout the project, the potential to expose archaeological finds is being monitored closely by our experts. Any remains exposed are investigated and recorded. Among recent Aotea Station finds are two partial foundations -- one running east-west and one running north-south on the Mayoral Drive frontage. These foundation walls represent portions of the southern and western walls of the old Royal Albert Hall. Remnants of the old Salvation Army building wall have also been uncovered, as have black beer bottle tops! Heritage New Zealand collates all information on our discoveries, and makes recommendations about what to do with any find once recorded. Watch this space -- there will be more to come! Our email address is: aotea@linkalliance.co.nz  Our phone number is: 0800 CRL TALK (275 8255) then press 3 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Click here if you wish to subscribe to future updates.