Ontario Transit Group

The project

The Ontario Line – Southern Civils, Stations and Tunnels contract includes: a 6km subway tunnel and associated tunnelling works; groundworks for construction of the tunnels and stations; seven new and expanded subway stations including one new above-ground station; and six underground subway stations. The project provides better connectivity people within and from downtown Toronto.

The challenge

Conquip was involved in the project at the pre-con tender stage, to help improve the project’s ROI, cycle times and speed of excavation and removal of materials from sites in densely populated urban areas, at four of the stations. (Queen-Spadina and King-Bathurst, Queen and Osgoode)

Efficiency and reliability were both paramount, and the project team needed to assess the BulkX method in comparison to others, like a clamshell excavator, boat skip and others.

Solution

The proven solution (BulkX) was chosen because it aided and solved for efficiency in removing excavated materials from the shaft, coming up to the surface at large volumes. Additionally, at the surface, it avoids “double handling”, e.g. removal of spoils from a skip, as an intermediate step before hauling it away, at the surface:

• The spoil is excavated and loaded into the BulkX, lifted and placed onto a gantry, discharging safely away inside the safe zone and away from the shaft, and into a truck to remove from site)
• The BulkX solution also alleviates need for additional plant equipment.

Conquip produced a customised set of gantry structures for its 12,000 litre BulkX skips. Once this design was developed, the Mechanical Engineering team ensured it was compliant and certified to the Canadian standards with a local Canadian engineer. Once the units were on-site, a qualified engineer was sent to inspect all equipment prior to operational use.

The mechanical system is easy to operate and is very reliable, fabricated exactly for the dimensions of the local trucks, with customised gantries manufactured as well.

The loading of trucks was very fast-paced, enabling the project team to load 5-6 trucks an hour.

Results

The BulkX has supported productivity by reducing double handling and excavation cycle times and also by reducing CO2 emissions. The main outcomes were:

• Reduce the double handling of spoil
• Keeping local noise and local traffic levels to a minimum
• Reduced CO2 impact and disruption to the environment due to reduced excavation timeframes and faster truck loading
• Increase the speed of productivity and assist with the project schedule compared with other methods.

Feedback

“We started the engagement with Conquip before being on-site on the project. We worked with Conquip on the specifics, so they built the gantries and structures according to the sites that we have.”

Sergio Gijon | Construction Manager, Queen-Spadina and King-Bathurst, Ontario Transit Group