The development of the new Western Sydney Airport is a major infrastructure project designed to accommodate 10 million domestic and international passengers a year as well as freight services.

In late 2019, the bulk earthworks project was awarded to a joint venture between CPB Contractors and Acciona (CPBACC JV). The project included topographical and drainage design for the entire airport precinct, including moving around 25 million cubic meters of earth to support the construction of major elements such as the runway and terminal.

This large-scale project covered a site of several square kilometres, making it even more challenging for the sustainability team to manage the environmental impact of the entire project. The team monitored noise and air quality across the site, using various devices, including Thomson and other gauges for dust and Svantek and Rion monitors for noise.

Managing all this disparate data in different formats and systems was set to be time-consuming and complex, so the team wanted a way to streamline this and manage everything in one place. They also wanted the solution to be web-based.

The solution

Using SiteHive’s intuitive environmental management software, the team was able to manage noise, dust, and vibration data from various sources - all in one place.

Jon May, Environment and Sustainability Lead, explains, “We put the project out to tender and then reviewed three options. SiteHive gave us the best confidence because we knew they had done it before and they understood our requirements.”

SiteHive Enviro software and Hexanode devices were deployed early on in the major earthworks phase of the project to enable the team to take a proactive approach to managing impacts on nearby stakeholders.

SiteHive allows data from multiple environmental monitoring devices to be managed easily from one place. The data is shown in graph form so the environment team can see what is happening on-site at any time. The team sets up their own rules within SiteHive Enviro and uses them to manage the various data inputs following the project requirements.

From this initial deployment, SiteHive’s technology has been trusted on all major work packages at Western Sydney Airport, including Western Sydney Airport Station Box & Tunnels (CPB Contractors), Surface Civil & Alignment Works (CPB Contractors), and terminal construction (Multiplex).

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"With SiteHive we can see the site in real time. We know if there’s an issue and we can investigate it and address it immediately."

Claire Mcpherson
CPBACC JV

Benefits and features

Easy-to-deploy and highly portable monitoring devices

Sensitive receivers all around the project site meant that the team needed to monitor environmental data at locations sometimes kilometres away from the site office. SiteHive Hexanode devices are highly mobile “set and forget” monitors that can capture images and audio of site events, enabling the team to see what's happening on-site, in real-time, from wherever they are.

Automated visualisation, analysis and reporting

Claire Macpherson, Environmental Graduate on the project, says, “Using SiteHive has been a huge time saver. In the past, we would have to download data and convert it into the right format for each device. Now it’s automatic—the data is right there, against our rules. For example, it used to take four hours to download the air quality data, and then we had to put it in Excel and work on it. Now it’s automatic. It’s a big saving just on that—probably a day a month.”

Proactive management of environmental impacts

The CPBACC JV team uses SiteHive to manage the site proactively. Continuous data in real-time allows them to see what’s happening and investigate issues immediately. They also use SiteHive SMS alerts on their phones, which notify them and their site team whenever there are exceedances on site.

User-friendly and ready to share graphical reporting

SiteHive Enviro provides graphs that are easy to understand and share with stakeholders.

Claire explains, “SiteHive has all the information you need for reporting. For example, the exceedance register table has all the exceedances recorded along with information and prompts so you can expand on that in the reports.”

Having all this information in a user-friendly format allows the team to keep their clients informed. Jon says, “Our client is very impressed with the data. Plus, the presentation of the graphs is attractive, so we can use them directly with the client.”

"By using SiteHive we have the ability to link to a variety of equipment. It means we can choose the equipment that’s right for us and the job. We are not constrained."

Jon May - Environmental and Sustainability Lead, CPBACC Joint Venture

Find out more

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