Auckland’s City Rail Link isn’t just reshaping the city’s transport network; it’s redefining how health and safety is approached in New Zealand’s construction sector.
With WorkSafe New Zealand as a key partner, the $5.493-billion City Rail Link (CRL) project has set a benchmark for proactive risk management, collaboration and safety innovation on a scale never seen before.
New Zealand’s largest transport infrastructure project is tantalisingly close to completion. The twin rail tunnels are 3.45 kilometres long and extend to a depth of 42 metres below the city centre. The health and safety regulator, WorkSafe, has been a crucial collaborator in the project, which is funded equally by Auckland Council and the Crown.
From the outset, the Project Alliance Board aimed to raise the standard of health and safety in construction. WorkSafe leveraged this by encouraging leaders to ensure that critical risk controls were in place and effective, and to continually improve their measurement of workplace health and safety.
‘From the beginning of the project, health, safety and wellbeing have been at the centre of every decision we make. Safety is everyone’s responsibility, from our senior leaders to our frontline staff,’ says CRL Chief Executive Pat Brockie.
Comprehensive regulatory collaboration
Specialist teams from all operational arms of WorkSafe contributed to the project’s four main sites since 2018. Our extractives team focused on underground safety, while Energy Safety collaborated on electrical protection for the tunnel-boring machine. The inspectorate took a lead role on buildings and structures, as well as silica dust safety, and WorkSafe’s hygienists were involved in ensuring health and environmental monitoring was up to standard. Two successive WorkSafe chief executives also joined discussions with CRL leadership.
WorkSafe’s involvement has spanned all levels of the project, from frontline workers and supervisors to senior leadership within Link Alliance and CRL Limited, while also keeping regular contact with Auckland Transport and KiwiRail.
‘The CRL has shown what’s possible when there’s genuine commitment to safety leadership from day one,’ says WorkSafe’s Chief Executive, Sharon Thompson.
Remarkable safety outcomes
The results speak for themselves. In more than 21.5 million hours of work on the project, there were only two onsite incidents requiring hospital admissions. It is a remarkable achievement for an infrastructure project of this scale and complexity.
‘This project proves that complex, high-risk construction doesn’t have to accept poor safety outcomes as inevitable,’ says Thompson. ‘Injuries on the project dropped significantly from 5.95 per million hours worked in 2018 down to 1.1 in 2025, proving that with the right approach we can fundamentally change safety performance in our highest-risk sectors.’
Setting international standards
Construction is expected to be completed by December 2025, and the CRL will open in 2026.
‘With more than 14,000 individuals having been inducted over the lifetime of the project, protecting people is our first and last thought. Every person on site is someone’s someone, and a strong focus on health and safety ensures we all get home to what matters most,’ says Brockie.
‘We know there is always more to be done, and we can never be complacent, but this commitment has guided us through the more hazardous stages of construction, from tunnelling to testing trains. As a result, we have moved from following international best practice to setting it, with learnings from our project now being adopted in Australia and Canada.’
A blueprint for the future
The CRL project demonstrates how effective collaboration between regulators and industry can drive safety excellence. It serves as a powerful example that even the most complex and large-scale construction projects can still achieve exceptional outcomes when there is genuine commitment to safety leadership from the outset.
Image courtesy of City Rail Link.