Engineering on Steroids: Sydney’s New Fish Market Completes

It’s taken half a decade and somewhere in the region of a billion dollars, but one of Sydney’s most complex—and impressive—construction projects has wrapped up. Multiplex has officially handed back the keys to the site of the new Sydney Fish Market at Glebe when NSW Premier Chris Minns took delivery during a ceremony on Thursday, November 13. After demolition of older structures on the site in 2020, construction got under way in earnest in 2021. The facility will now undergo final fitouts before a planned opening date of January 19—ready for the Australia Day weekend, the Lunar New Year Festival, and an expected 6 million annual visitors. Much has been made of the building’s profile and place-shaping potential, with its prominent position in an underused and rapidly evolving corner of Sydney . The distinctive undulating roof composed of 594 glue-laminated timber beams and 400 roof cassettes, which gives the impression of a set of fish scales, certainly helps. According to Multiplex NSW regional director Dan Murphy, his team’s initial reaction upon winning the contract was “we’ve been awarded the delivery of an Opera House that sells fish”. “It’s an iconic architectural piece of work. It’s also an engineering project on steroids,” Murphy told The Urban Developer . “The Sydney Fish Market is quite unique in the fact that it has all of these engineering infrastructure challenges, be it the cofferdam—which was the biggest Sydney Harbour has ever seen—and the foundation systems and the hydrostatic basement.” ▲ Public space, accessible 24/7, includes a sweeping forecourt facing the CBD. Image by Meg Redwin. A cofferdam is a watertight enclosure built in or across a body of water to allow the enclosed area to be pumped out, creating a dry, safe environment for construction or repair work. Bespoke plant and services, a trading floor for deliveries and wholesalers, two levels of retail and dining, and 6000sq m of public space and forecourt are among other elements included in the list of works. In the belly of the whale Only a small portion of the structure is built on land—the bulk of the complex extends into Blackwattle Bay. Large windows, internally and externally, will allow shoppers views of the lower ground trading floor and of wholesalers gutting tuna. But much of the more impressive elements of the structure, and the construction job, are invisible to the public. Waterfront specialist Multiplex came up with an innovative solution to get the basement done. Instead of a floating formwork approach, as the builder had successfully deployed at Walsh Bay’s Pier 6/7, Multiplex decided instead to introduce an engineered sand building platform and dewater the cofferdam. “There’s limited projects in Australia that have that experience of doing that process. We really relied on expertise out of Europe, geotechnologies from around Australia, and bespoke plant from South-East Asia,” Murphy says. Once the cofferdam was dewatered of 100 million litres, and with 60,000 cubic metres of sand pumped into the site, “Sydney got a new beach for a period of time … this great sand platform that enabled us to then conventionally form up the hydrostatic basement”. Delete In part, that choice was about allowing barge deliveries, which meant about 5650 truck movements were avoided during the project delivery. But it also enabled work on the mammoth scale that the project required. “This monster is over 250m long and equally as wide,” Murphy says. “So it posed some challenges, like getting the pontoons in and out, but also doing it safely underneath the concrete structure in a marine environment.” The 20,000sq m basement floor of the building is below the waterline and required about 11,700 cubic metres (or six Olympic swimming pools) of specially designed concrete. At the time of the final pour, NSW lands minister Steve Kamper praised the sustainability of the material, “which has resulted in substantial reductions in CO2 emissions”. “This cutting-edge concrete blend not only demonstrates the NSW Government’s commitment to environmental responsibility and engineering excellence, but also offers early-age strength, minimal shrinkage and low-heat generation,” Kamper said. The complex holds some very specific features, unique to a fish market. The closest analog would be Tokyo’s Toyosu Fish Market, completed in 2018 and the largest in the world, but without the retail and public activation spaces that the Multiplex project boasts. Delete Within the belly of the beast, the Sydney Fish Market holds bespoke plant that includes a live crustacean system, a room dedicated to industrial tub washing and endless ice-making units. “We’ve got freezers going down to -22 degrees, we’re running the project on ammonia—a cooling system with brine—which is really bespoke and different,” Murphy says. “There’s food compliance challenges, there’s a huge amount of epoxy fluorine—the amount of co-ordination and detailing, it’s pretty special.” “And then [on the] lower ground, where the trading happens, is really an engineering masterpiece for services and finishes that add all those things together. “The engineering and the architectural outcome—it is truly engineering on steroids.” Careful design and community work Inevitably for a project of this scope, difficulties arose (including all of those associated with the pandemic). But a careful approach to design and delivery helped Multiplex bring the job in to safe harbour. From the outset, design collaboration with wholesalers at the old facility helped inform the new. A mudcrab room with a tropical climate, for example, and greater consideration for bus access, reflect the increasing importance of Asian markets and consumer behaviours for the seafood industry. Neighbours have largely been impressed by Multiplex’s outreach, including the nearby Sydney Secondary College. Multiplex collaborated with the school to schedule the noisiest parts of installing the 481 marine piles outside the time of the HSC exams. However, the Netflix series Heartbreak High , filming at the school, didn’t require any particular consideration. One local business owner told The Urban Developer that they enjoyed being taken out on a boat by the team to understand the works. “They kept me abreast; I didn’t feel like I was being ignored,” they said. According to the business owner, the fish market will revitalise the area, and provide greater foot traffic to the small and struggling retail strip on Bridge Road. “I think it’s good for Sydney. Progress is progress.” But cost overruns, Chinese border closures, and a crane collapse were much heavier going for the project team. With a purported $836-million price tag, Multiplex is now in mediation with Infrastructure NSW over the final bill, which may top a billion dollars. ▲ The new facility will anchor ongoing government-led development in Blackwattle Bay. Images above and second carousel: Aran Anderson Photography Nonetheless, partnering early and strategically helped keep costs manageable during the tough Covid years, and produced better results for the project. Even prior to tender documents being released, Multiplex had made decisions about electrical, hydraulic, marine, mechanical, facade and civil engineering partners. According to Murphy, selecting the right people instead of opening the job to lowest-price bidders “gave us the ability to pick the best in field, and that partnering has assisted us over a tumultuous global five years”. “We went through global exposure that we’ve never seen before. And there’s probably been a lesson learned for the industry and society, about the contractual risks that contractors and consultants and subcontractors took during that period of time.” Managing the key team during a long, difficult project was also crucial, Murphy says, and maintaining the knowledge and skills will help when delivering builds at this scale. Perhaps the most difficult day of the job was September 28, 2023 when a crane collapsed on site. There were no fatalities or serious injuries, and the sole injured worker was able to walk to an ambulance. “I characterise it as the luckiest project in Australia. As far as I’m aware, I don’t think that an incident like that has happened before and the cause is still under investigation,” Murphy says. “That was just one of many challenges that the project team were exposed to. Recovering a tower crane, remobilising a new tower crane, trying to get a project pattern running again. “It cost us time, cost us money. It didn’t cost a life, which was awesome.” With the job now complete, Murphy says the team will have fond memories of the area and are open to helping out as the local renaissance continues . “It’s going to be tough going over the Anzac Bridge, heading into the city, and not turning right. It’s a beautiful area of Sydney. I think it’s a real unknown gem.” “We’ve been really fortunate enough to build an iconic project in this community … fortunate to be there for the last five years,” Murphy says. “It’s once-in-a-century stuff.”

Engineering on Steroids: Sydney’s New Fish Market Completes

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