News from Halcrow - New trains for Wellington on test
New trains for Wellington on test
Members of Halcrow’s international team of rail engineers were in South Korea on 23 March.
The date marked another milestone on the way to new trains forWellington, New Zealand. David Benham, Chief Executive Officer of Greater Wellington Regional Council, and Angus Gabara, of Greater Wellington Rail Ltd., visited Hyundai-Rotem’s Changwon factory in South Korea to inspect the first of 48 two-car Electric Multiple Units (EMUs) being built there for Wellington’s metro network.
Testing has begun on this first unit and it is due to arrive in Wellington later this year, entering revenue service shortly afterwards.
The visitors – our clients – were joined by Anthony Oyo, Halcrow’s project director, based in Wellington and John Gray, onsite manufacturing manager for Halcrow who has been based in Changwon for over 7 years.
The team at Changwon also comprises Jongman “James” Lee, assistant manufacturing manager and Michelle Choi, translator and project support.
The train is called Matangi, meaning ‘wind’ in Maori, which was the winning entry in a naming competition held by the train owner, our client, Greater Wellington Regional Council.
Halcrow has led the procurement process for the 96 vehicles, including developing the vehicle specification, implementing the procurement process and now project managing technical design development, manufacturing quality control and build compliance. Halcrow has also been instrumental, with the Kiwi Rail design team, in managing the development of some key design features, such as low floor and multi-user access areas and a modern simplified and more cost effective braking system.
Halcrow continues to add value for our client and to this important rail project for New Zealand through its global team, including Rigby Wason, (deputy project director) in Wellington, John Youds (compliance management), Stephen Ward (spares strategy) and Paul Legdin (safety and risk management), all in Sydney; and Kay Kim, project administration, Seoul.
For more about Halcrow and the projects we do, please visit www.halcrow.com/australasia
