Halcrow has been providing technical and procurement advice from its offices in Australia to the Greater Wellington regional council since 2006 as new trains are built for the Wellington suburban rail network.
In March 2010 the first of 48 two-car EMUs being built by Hyundai-Rotem at its Changwon factory in South Korea began testing. It is due to arrive in Wellington later this year, entering revenue service shortly afterwards.
The train is called Matangi, meaning ‘wind’ in Maori, which was the winning entry in a naming competition held by the train owner, our client, Greater Wellington Regional Council.
The goal of the project was to deliver an affordable, integrated, safe and sustainable transport system for Wellington. Of prime importance were safety, reliability, predictable maintenance costs with a low obsolescence risk, low life-cycle costs and compatibility with existing infrastructure, accessibility from platform level across the full mobility range and a two-car electric multiple unit (EMU) configurable to a maximum eight-car train.
Halcrow has led the procurement process for the 96 vehicles, including developing the vehicle specification, implementing the procurement process and now project managing technical design development, manufacturing quality control and build compliance.
Halcrow has also been instrumental, with the Kiwi Rail design team, in managing the development of some key design features, such as low floor and multi-user access areas and a modern simplified and more cost effective braking system.
As technical advisor and project manager, Halcrow developed and delivered a procurement model, and negotiated the contract with the preferred supplier. Subsequently, we were asked to project direct the supply of the new trains and in the process we were able to work with the supplier to develop design modifications to suit the client’s requirements.