Her Majesty’s Theatre Redevelopment Demolition & Civil

Key Deliverables

• Complex demolition
• Earthworks
• Heritage facades
• Restricted access

Project Overview

Her Majesty’s theatre has undergone a major redevelopment whilst maintaining the buildings original façade on both Grote Street and Pitt Street, to preserve the buildings history and character. The demolition works were very complex and required a large amount of planning with numerous consultants and engineers. Two of the building walls are heritage listed, this required a large amount of controls to be put in place in order to protect the facades. Due to the heritage walls and the complex design of the theatre, multiple demolition plans were created to ensure a safe demolition procedure was undertaken on site. the theatre walls were 500mm thick masonry construction and approximately 20m in height, this create multiple challenges with the building occupying the entire site boundary. Numerous heavy-duty props were installed to ensure the stability of the structure was maintained during the demolition works. Due to the heritage walls being maintained the demolition had to be undertaken in a strategic and systematic method, this entailed a combination of the long reach excavator, 25t excavator, multiple boom lifts, and over 600 hours of crane time all working together within a tight boundary.

Royal Park Salvage (RPS) was required to manage a number of challenges on this project including:

• 2 heritage listed walls
• Multi-storey carpark to the rear of the site
• Multi-storey apartment complex neighbouring property
• Complex logistics and planning for efficient demolition
• Heavy vehicle and foot traffic
• Sensitive vibration monitoring which required constant adaptions to be made on site
• Site restraints including restricted access / room

Outcomes

Stakeholder management
Due the proximity of the site, constant communication was required with numerous stakeholders surrounding the site. The site was immediately surrounded by a multi-storey apartment building, a multi-storey carpark and a beauty therapist. Other notable stakeholders in close proximity included a construction site on Pitt St of a multi-storey apartment building, a pub directly across the road and the Adelaide Central Markets. All of the surrounding stakeholders required extensive communications and added various complexities to the scheduling of the works.

Protection Of Heritage Facades
Prior to RPS arriving on site, an extensive heritage façade retention system was put in place. This system had large members of structural steel both external and internal walls. During the demolition works this structural steel and the façade required extensive protection to ensure the stability of the walls was not compromised. Multiple air gaps were undertaken to ensure there was no strain put onto these walls, and many hours of manual labour were undertaken to separate the demolition works from the heritage walls