Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

We completed all 10 piles on 3 Apr and for the past week and a half I have watched the civil team move a lot of dirt from one side to the other with no obvious plan. They have now taken possession of the site since we finished (they actually started ripping the road up while we were still on it!) to carry out the bulk excavation down to a sensible RL for us to carry out a more detailed excavation for the pile caps and embankment retaining walls. It has been a frustrating week trying to get a coherent answer or any information out of the civil team and I have picked up on a very strong sense of us and them between the civil and structures team throughout the project. The issue lies with the lack of work available to the civil team who are being pushed to close their worklots as soon as possible and move to other projects before coming back later in the year to proceed with the landscape works. There has been over million cubic metres of earth to move on this project and the Dickson Rd bridge is the final structure to start so they have been keen to get in and for us to progress so they can complete their work. Their impatience shows and results in less dialogue rather than more but by the end of this week we were all on a more even keel and the help of a few simple powerpoint sketches seems to have impressed and helped visualise the work required for all involved. We also have the Combined Services Route (CSR) digging away in the same patch of ground with one route adjacent to abutment B which we have successfully de-conflicted with but another route passes through abutment A and which at the moment looks like it travels directly through our excavation works. I am sure there will be more on this in next weeks blog but we first need to raise this issue with the designer.

As the civil team work to raise the ground on either appraches to the bridge we have manged to gain access to the abutments a day earlier than planned to start the detailed excavation at abutment B which we continued on saturday and hope to finish on Monday. We have now excavated about 2.5 metres below the existing road level and once we have cleaned out the excavation we can start the FRP works. Once complete the excavations will be blinded and the piles trimmed next week.

The pressure has been on at the other end of my section of works at Kemps Creek bridge which is at the entrance to the Stabling Yard. The stabling yard becomes a rail site as of Monday which seems to mean security gets beefed up to that of an army barracks (minus the armed guards) and the rail team works at a more relaxed pace. What this means for the rest of us is that we all work to the rail timelines. Track is starting to be installed at the stabling yard and so the civil team need to be laying the capping layer which the ballast sits on and so we need to have completed that end of the bridge so that the capping layer can be laid. We managed to pour the last segments of walkway at abutment B which faces the yard so come monday the civil team have a completed end to lay the capping up to. We still have the remaining walkways which house the Combined Services Routes (CSR) within them for the remaining 70m length of the bridge and we have been told we are on the critical path. We need to complete this bridge by 15 May for the track to continue from the stabling yard. Track is also being laid from the Glenfield end from 4 May so the bridge at Dickson will soon become critical also as the track approaches from Glenfield which is about 8Km away at a rate of 400m a day. Our aim is to complete the abutment walls by mid may so that capping, ballast and track can be laid between us.

The pre-cast parapets have been installed and propped before the CSR walkways are poured which tie-in and secure the parapet sections permanaently.

At the end of the week I got an opportunity to visit Civilbuild who are producing all of the pre-cast work for the project. These include the pre-cast parapet sections for all bridges for which there are over 2000 of various sizes and the pre-stressed concrete beams for Dickson Rd which was the reason I visited. I went up with the Project Verifiers to witness them pouring 4 of the beams for Dickson Rd but they eneded up cancelling the pour without informing any of us after a 3 hour drive to get there. 3 hours is considered popping down the road in Australian terms but having driven back to the project after an hour at the pre-cast yard and then driving home it ended up being 7 hours of driving. I did manage to see 4 beams they had already cast and 4 more that were formed up and ready to pour on mon. We require 22 beams for Dickson Rd and the yard has the capacity to pour 4 in a day. Each beam has a 300mm cylindrical void in the centre to reduce weight and is pre-stressed using 20 x 15.2mm (7 wire) strands with a force at mid-span for each strand once the tensioning jack is released of 175kN.