Ausnet, Zinfra ,Jemena needed to look beyond their normal suppliers for steel fabrication this time because this was a genuine challenge that was to unfold. Mechcon Welding and Fabrication were awarded the Design and Fabrication on the 14th January 2025 with no real time to prepare for the Design, Fabrication and Installation 4x off separate custom Platform and Guardrail systems that would be part of Electrical Substation upgrade projects for newly installed Transformer/ Kiosks powering recently developed housing estates in Melbourne’s outer north . Within the first two weeks Mechcon had Shop Drawn over x55 pages of detailed design of the first custom Platform for approval, then went straight into full blown production and fabrication at a rate that Ausnet more likely than not hadn’t seen before.
Overview:
The Steel Platforms package was absolutely time critical with a very tight schedule and a strict budget, by early March 2025 over 17 tonnes of Platforms ,Gratings and Handrails had been successfully delivered and installed including a further x3 sets of Shop Drawing designs for each separate platform across x4 different Zinfra and Ausnet Substations Sites. All steel fabrication was followed to the exacting measurements drawn and there was to be No site welding and or modifications allowed onsite.
G’day guys, it’s Luke here at Mechcon Welding Fabrication.
We’re out here at the northern suburbs of out of Melbourne, at Beverage, looking over our recently installed galvanised platform system for some transformers and kiosks that have recently been powered up and are in operation.
This particular project required four custom platforms, all different in design, a total of 17 tonnes.
We had about three weeks to get the shop drawings together for the first platform. Once we did that, we went straight into full blown production and fabrication, probably at a rate that Ausnet more likely than not hadn’t seen before.
The time frame was extremely tight. This job was absolutely time critical with the scheduling program that truly needed to be seen to be believed. By early March 2025, 17 tonnes of platforms were completed.
The start date was in January, so the whole thing was wrapped up in about two months, which is fairly impressive in any situation.
We’ll have a look in the video just of the finish with the stairs, the handrails, the grading and just the overall installation. Everything went well on all four platforms on each site across the northern suburbs.
Without any site modifications allowed, being a live site, we didn’t have any flexibility on anything basically not fitting up properly.
There was no site loading or adjustments allowed, no cutting, anything like that, no oxy cutting. So it was critical to have everything 100% in terms of fitment and connections, which went really well.
Ended up doing, I think, over 300 pages of shop drawings for all four platforms and I think we had something like 360 separate laser cut plates and connecting brackets throughout.
As you can see, it’s gone together quite well and we look forward to doing a little bit more work for Ausnet and Zinfra in the future.
