The Woolgoolga-to-Ballina project was the upgrade of approximately 155 kilometres of the Pacific Highway to separated dual motorway. The project started approximately 26 kilometres north of Coffs Harbour at Woolgoolga and ended approximately six kilometres south of Ballina. It comprised more than 100 bridges, 10 grade separated interchanges, five town bypasses, underpasses and overpasses for local traffic, fauna crossings and driver rest areas.

The Pacific Highway Upgrade – Woolgoolga-to-Ballina, Portion A was the largest of the four design packages, including 49 kilometres of dual carriageway and 73 bridges, and was awarded to GHD with BG&E as the Sub-Consultant.

BG&E’s highly-skilled team provided bridge design, structural and civil engineering, flooding and drainage, and materials testing and durability services.

The key features of Portion A included:

• 116 design lots with four stages for each lot, with designs delivered before or on schedule;
• 35 kilometres of early works road design within four months;
• optimised road alignment of the reference design;
• Optimised bridge deck designs, reducing the number of 1,500 super tee bridge girders by 88 compared with reference designs (which provided a saving $2.8million);
• optimised bridge span configurations and substructure design (which also reduce construction costs by $4.8million); and
• refined the design of standard Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) prestressed planks and super tee beams.`