Suppliers and individual tradespeople are being encouraged to put up their hands for work on Brisbane’s $3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf development, as construction of the site’s diaphragm wall begins.

The 172m concrete wall will create a watertight underground barrier between the Queen’s Wharf basement and the Brisbane River.

Tourism Industry Development Minister Kate Jones said workers would excavate more than 450,000 cubic metres of material over the next 15 months to create a five-level basement for thousands of car parks.

“As the project moves towards peak construction demand, we’ll be recruiting hundreds more construction workers to deliver Queen’s Wharf,” she said.

“Starting this week, tradies and companies interested in working on this project will be able to register their interest online.”

Ms Jones said the launch of the website on Friday morning would be followed by an advertising campaign for more workers in The Courier Mail.

“The website will enable subcontractors, suppliers and individual tradespeople to register their interest to participate over the life of the Queen’s Wharf’s build,” she said.

The Destination Brisbane Consortium would go live with an Industry Capability Network website, to capture what they expected would be thousands of varied expressions of interest to work-on and supply to project, Ms Jones said.

She said Multiplex, one of Destination Brisbane Consortium’s contractors, would advertise for a range of workers in Saturday’s Courier Mail.

The fields targeted include; painting, steel work, glazing, metalwork, carpentry, roofing and hardware supply.

Ms Jones urged workers keen to register their interest to visit www.queenswharfbrisbane.com.au

Destination Brisbane Consortium project director Simon Crooks said the diaphragm wall was an engineering feat rarely seen in Brisbane.

“We will use more than 2500 cubic metres of concrete – enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool – to build the diaphragm wall,” Mr Crooks said.

“The wall will have 28 panels running along the inside edge of Queens Wharf Rd to Margaret St to provide a watertight barrier.

“The 28 vertical panels are 800mm wide and are between 2m and 7.2m in length.”

To build the diaphragm wall, a guide wall is first dug, and a narrow vertical trench is then excavated and filled with bentonite slurry, a naturally occurring clay.

A steel reinforcement cage, up to 6 tonnes in weight and more than 20m in length, is craned into the vertical trench, which is then filled with concrete to create the panels.

The clay slurry is recycled and stored onsite during the works in large blue and yellow towers along Queens Wharf Road.

Mr Crooks said the barrier wall would take about three months to complete. The remaining circumference of the basement will be secured with concrete piles and rock anchors.