Marinus Link — landfall shore crossings.
Marinus Link is a new HVDC interconnector linking the Tasmanian and Victorian electricity grids. At each coast its subsea cables come ashore through conduits installed by horizontal directional drilling, at Heybridge in north-west Tasmania and Waratah Bay in South Gippsland. Each landfall sits under a different state's approval regime, with Commonwealth conditions over both, and the works must satisfy all of them at once.
Commex leads approvals and authorisation change for the landfall works, from inside Spiecapag's delivery team. We hold the condition set across both jurisdictions: Tasmania's environment protection notice and management measures, Victoria's environmental performance requirements, incorporated document and marine consent, and the Commonwealth EPBC conditions.
When a condition or a method changes, we assess what it means for the plans, the programme and the cost, and document it so it can be agreed before the work proceeds.
The engagement.
01Compliance matrices across two states+
We built and maintain the compliance matrices for the landfall works, one per state. The Tasmanian matrix maps 125 obligations, every notice condition and management measure, against the nine plans that must meet them. The Victorian matrix covers the environmental performance requirements, the incorporated document and the marine consent. Every gap is routed to the plan or party that should close it, in the form the regulator and auditor will test against.
02A 25-plan management suite+
Fourteen Victorian and eleven Tasmanian plans, covering construction environmental management, HDD, drilling fluids, frac-out prevention, noise and vibration, groundwater, acid sulfate soils and contamination, erosion and surface water, waste, traffic, biodiversity, bushfire and flood. We run the suite as one controlled register, coordinate the specialist consultants who author the technical plans, and test each revision against the live condition set before it is issued.
03Verification & approval pathways+
Victoria's approvals require key plans to be verified by an Independent Environmental Auditor before they are used. In Tasmania, the equivalent gate is approval by the EPA Director. We mapped which plans pass through each gate, sequenced submissions against the construction programme, and built the cross-references reviewers work from, so neither pathway becomes the step that holds up construction.
04Crew training & site tools+
A plan only works if the crew knows what it asks of them. We turned the management plans into site environmental guides for Waratah Bay and Heybridge, a site induction and a supervisor pack, backed by 30 minute crew briefings, one per plan. Each covers what supervisors and engineers need to know, do and monitor, and the restrictions that apply. [Confirm which items are delivered and which are in progress.]
05Management of change+
Approval conditions and construction methods both evolve during delivery. We set up a scope gate that logs and assesses every informal request before work proceeds, a management of change procedure for environment, sustainability and land access, and plan by plan impact registers. Each change is assessed for its effect on plans, methods, programme and cost, and documented so it can be agreed under the contract.
06Site-specific technical solutions+
Coastal HDD sites bring their own problems. We developed treatment and disposal pathways for acid sulfate and contaminated soils, assessed water supply options for drilling fluid including seawater abstraction, planned noise controls for 24 hour drilling near homes, prepared a fauna procedure for wombat burrows on the work pad, and wrote environmental obligations into the civils and sheet pile subcontracts.
Published with the project team's knowledge. Project naming is subject to client consent.