Woolgoolga to Ballina was the final link in the Pacific Highway to be upgraded to four lanes and is now open to traffic. The Pacific Highway Upgrade project includes advancing the highway to motorway over its 155-kilometre length, nine interchanges, more than 170 bridges and in excess of 350 connectivity structures. Source: Timberbiz
Within the Woolgoolga to Ballina segment, more than 102 bridges connect region to region, with the highest and longest crossing in the upgrade spanning 1.5 kilometres.
To support this huge upgrade Australian timber supplier, Big River Group, worked with a number of building companies, supplying around 90% of all building materials used on the construction of the many bridges.
Supplying an array of formwork products, Big River provided solutions that suited all bridge needs from the largest bridge over Clarence River at Harwood, to the bridge over the Richmond River at Broadwater.
For the varying headstock sizes, Big River provided a large volume of structural plywood that was placed on top of the headstocks as well as the infills on the Super T Beams.
Big River’s Formwork LVL was used in conjunction with the structural plywood to provide a cost-effective formwork solution.
Formply and RedEdge were also used for the suspended and ground slab construction. RedEdge is light, straight and more uniform than traditional alternatives such as pine and hardwood. To ensure consistency of standard, Big River also supplied a number of formwork accessories that made the building material ordering process much more efficient.
The company developed an engineered timber system that is 100% Australian made in their Grafton factory.
The structural grade engineered plywood bridge deck system acts as an alternative to steel and concrete decks and are less expensive, faster to install.
The key feature of Big River’s Engineered Bridge Decking is its capability to be manufactured in continuous lengths to the full width of a bridge, providing excellent load distribution by utilising the full structure, and extensively extending the life of existing structures.
The system is an engineered substitute for traditional hardwood decking and is manufactured to AS/NZS 2269-2008 from sustainable Australian plantation pine. When Big River’s Engineered Bridge Decking system is used, it delivers a fully compliant bridge to AS:5100 T44 deflection limits as well as M1600.
