Adelaide Convention Centre Redevelopment

Background
The Adelaide Convention Centre, built in 1987, was the first purpose-built convention centre in Australia.

By 2013, the Centre had outgrown its current space and also required a refresh in certain areas. As such, an extensive two year redevelopment was undertaken, all while the Convention Centre was still trading.

Scope of Work
Royal Park Salvage was engaged to undertake both demolition and civil work.

Demolition
Royal Park Salvage removed the existing building structures and replaced them with new structures as directed by the architects, Woods Bagot.

In order to minimise the interruption to conferences / events, time restrictions were imposed around this work which Royal Park Salvage worked to.

Temporary hoarding and access ways were constructed by Royal Park Salvage to separate the demolition zone from working areas within the Convention Centre.

Also, as the Convention Centre is (partially) located above the Railway Station, work in certain instances, had to be managed with live railway tracks underneath, necessitating the need for additional safety management and supervision.

Specific demolition work undertaken included the following :

• Removing one side of the original structure in order to extend the facility.
• Removing the western façade of the Convention Centre and the stair exhaust towers.
• Cool rooms, the kitchen and food preparation areas were all removed
• Slab penetrations were undertaken to allow for new stairwells and escalators.

Recycling
All concrete and demolition waste from this building site was taken to Adelaide Resource Recovery and 90% of this was recycled.

Civil
Royal Park Salvage performed the civil works which consisted of a state of the art design incorporating the new building structure and the surrounding environment. Several features were included in the design such as weight saving technology instead of reinforced concrete over the existing Montefiore Road Bridge. All works were undertaken while a live railway corridor was maintained underneath and the presence of high voltage cables running directly through the construction area, providing power for Adelaide Oval and the Festival Theatre. The civil design included several engineered retaining walls with architectural curves and angles to match the new building structure and 400 square meters of coloured exposed aggregate concrete at the main western entrance of the Convention Centre.