Case Studies

PROJECT : PERTH CITY LINK BUSPORT

Location : Wellington Street, Perth, Western Australia

BACKGROUND

The Perth City Link busport is reconnecting Northbridge with the city centre for the first time in over 100 years – extending from the Perth Station to the new Perth Arena.

The busport required sufficient water storage for protection against fire.

THE CHALLENGE

The facility is an underground bus terminal and buses have a certain level of risk of catching alight. The busport’s design engineer faced substantial difficulties achieving sufficient fire water storage for fire protection in the underground terminal.

The challenge included:

• The actual incoming water supply which determines the storage required was unknown
• Changes to water supply over design phase would mean larger capacity fire pumps and tanks in a plant room that cannot be expanded
• Underground plant control room, and
• Installation in tight conditions.

HOW WE WERE APPROACHED

We have been involved in the Perth City Link busport project from the beginning, providing valuable support and advice to the hydraulic and fire consultants.

OUR SOLUTION

Drawing on an extensive resource of knowledge within the team we carefully analysed the minimum space requirements, the dimensions of each piece of equipment and design calculations to give our draftsman the constraints we had to work with. With this information we were able to redesign the room layout, pump skid configuration and the tank dimensions to meet the restraints of the room size.

THE OUTCOMES

We delivered a successful project outcome, with a sufficient amount of water that could be dumped in a short amount of time to douse the flames of any fire and, in turn, successfully protect the lives of many passengers.

With the tanks and fire pumps successfully installed in the tight plant room we were able to provide sufficient space to ensure accessibility would be achieved.