Central Interceptor: Fears Italian workers could leave $1.2b project mid-build

Monday, 20 July 2020

In July 2020, The CRL project had reached the halfway point, on time and on budget

There are growing fears that specialist international workers could leave the site of a major infrastructure project mid-build.

Watercare’s Central Interceptor, a $1.2 billion sewer tunnel, is being constructed by Italian outfit Ghella Abergeldie Joint Venture. It will run underground from Auckland’s Grey Lynn to the Māngere Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Ghella Abergeldie brought a number of specialised workers to New Zealand for the project – the country’s largest wastewater build – before coronavirus closed the borders.

The 38-metre high hydro fraise machine which is busy excavating at a site in Māngereas part of the Central Interceptor project.

But there is growing concern some of them may return home early.

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The Central Interceptor will be constructed using a tunnel boring machine. Pictured is the machine used on Watercare's project Hobson.

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The City Rail Link project, running under Auckland, has reached the halfway mark to completion.

Watercare executive programme director Shayne Cunis said morale on site is getting worse as Covid-19 continues to devastate Italy.

There have been more than 244,000 confirmed cases of the virus in Italy and more than 35,000 deaths.

“[The Italian workers] come in on Monday, if they've had a bad phone call at the weekend or something, they are really down,” Cunis said.

“One had a mother on a ventilator – if he goes, will he come back?”

New Zealand’s largest transport infrastructure build, the City Rail Link (CRL), is facing a similar problem.

City Rail Link Limited chief executive Dr Sean Sweeney anticipates it will be an ongoing issue for some time yet.

“We got through the [alert] levels fine, but we are an international project,” he said.

“We source people and equipment from all over the world and that is proving to be a huge challenge given the border restrictions.”

Delivering tunnels and stations for the CRL involves using a number of “advanced engineering approaches not normally utilised in New Zealand”, he said.

“The border restrictions impact on CRL in a number ways. It‘s hard to get skilled personnel into the country and hard for overseas workers to return home to see their families.”

The company is working to mitigate those challenges along with the rest of the Link Alliance, a group of seven companies from across New Zealand and the world, he said.

There are currently no local companies that have the skills readily available to undertake the work. About 75 percent of the Central Interceptor project leadership is from overseas, Cunis said.

Sources also said Ghella Abergeldie was in talks to charter a flight to Italy so its staff could visit family for Christmas.

The company could not be reached for comment.

Cunis said the team as a collective is committed to staying on until the project is completed and the majority are used to working offshore.

However, he said an inability for workers to return to their home countries easily “does create some issues”.

“We are continuing to monitor the situations and the ability for these people to travel back to their home countries, but then return to New Zealand to continue on the build.”

Any flights home for staff will result in two weeks’ quarantine upon return to New Zealand – if they can get back in – which risks delaying work further.